From Plant Press, Vol. 21, No. 3, July 2018.
The Department of Botany and the United States National Herbarium present the José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany to a botanist and scholar of international stature who has contributed significantly to advancing the field of tropical botany. The award is named in honor of Dr. José Cuatrecasas, a pioneering botanist and taxonomist, who spent nearly a half-century working in the Smithsonian Institution's Department of Botany. Cuatrecasas devoted his career to plant exploration in tropical South America and this award serves to keep vibrant the accomplishments and memory of this outstanding scientist.
The winner of this prestigious award is selected by a committee made up of four botanists on staff in the Department in consultation with other plant scientists outside of the Smithsonian Institution. Nominations for the Medal are accepted from all scientists in the Botany Department. The award consists of a bronze medal bearing an image of José Cuatrecasas on the front with the recipient’s name and date of presentation on the back. Highlights from past presentations to the recipients are available at <http://botany.si.edu/cuatrecasas/cuatrecasasMedal.cfm>.
Alan K. Graham is the 16th recipient of the José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany. Graham received B.A. (1956) and M.A. (1958) degrees from the University of Texas. His Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1962 under paleobotanist Chester Arnold was followed by postdoctoral work at Harvard University. He had a long tenure (1964–2002) as a Professor of Biological Sciences and Geology and distinguished teacher at Kent State University, and since 2002 has been a Research Associate at the Missouri Botanical Garden. He has published over 200 scholarly works, including authoring four books. His latest book, Land Bridges: Ancient environments, plant migrations, and New World connections, was published in March 2018 by The University of Chicago Press. He has endowed research funds and been honored with Paleobotany and Biogeography, A Festschrift for Alan Graham in His 80th Year (Missouri Botanical Garden Press, 2014), and the Asa Gray Award from the American Society Plant Taxonomists (2009).
Graham’s long interest in pollen and utilizing microfossils to track American vegetation history included starting a reference slide collection, as an undergraduate, that eventually grew to 25,000 slides when it was gifted to the Smithsonian in 2008. His long-term studies on Neotropical paleobotany were supported by the National Science Foundation and have focused on late Cretaceous and Cenozoic terrestrial paleoenvironments. The Cuatrecasas Medal selection committee took special note of Graham’s focus on understanding the origins and history of neotropical floras that has culminated in impactful synthetic works. This paleo-perspective, which spans Central America, South America, and the Caribbean, is of special relevance to this year’s Smithsonian Botanical Symposium.
The past recipients of the Cuatrecasas Medal are Rogers McVaugh from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2001); P. Barry Tomlinson from Harvard University (2002); John Beaman from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (2003); David Mabberley from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney (2004); Jerzy Rzedowski and Graciela Calderón de Rzedowski from Instituto de Ecología del Bajío, Michoacán, Mexico (2005); Sherwin Carlquist from Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden and Pomona College (2006); Mireya D. Correa A. from the University of Panama and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (2008); Norris H. Williams from the Florida Museum of Natural History and the University of Florida, Gainesville (2009); Beryl B. Simpson from the University of Texas at Austin (2010); Walter S. Judd from the University of Florida at Gainesville (2012); Ana Maria Giulietti Harley from the Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana, Brazil (2013); H. Peter Linder from Zurich University (2014); Paulo Günter Windisch from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (2015); Kamal Bawa from the University of Massachusetts Boston (2016); and Robin B. Foster from the Field Museum (2017).
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