From Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 1, January 2021.
Harold E. Robinson, Smithsonian Curator Emeritus, passed away at the age of 88 on December 17, 2020, after suffering a major stroke earlier in the week.
Left: Harold Robinson in 1965. (photo by Smithsonian Institution)
Right: Harold Robinson and Vicki Funk in October 2019. (photo by Ken Wurdack)
Robinson was born in 1932 and raised in Winchester, Virginia. From an early age, he showed an interest in the natural world and has long balanced a focus on plants with a profound interest in zoology. Robinson carried out his undergraduate studies at Ohio University, where he majored in Botany and minored in Zoology. He then continued at the University of Tennessee, where he earned a Master’s degree with a Botany major and Entomology minor. Although his thesis focused on flowering plants, he also began working on mosses, which were the focus of his Ph.D. research at Duke University. Robinson graduated from Duke in 1960, again with a Botany major and a Zoology minor. After a brief stint at Wofford College, he accepted a position at the Smithsonian Institution in 1962.
During his 49 years as a Curator in the Department of Botany, and subsequently as a resident Curator Emeritus, Robinson was incredibly productive, publishing more than 950 papers. Using comparative morphology, Robinson carried out extensive studies of the largest and most diverse of the plant families (Asteraceae, over 27,000 species). This work capitalized on the use of micromorphology, not extensively employed prior to his work on the family, and required a large collection like that in the United States National Herbarium.
Left: National Museum of Natural History Director Kirk Johnson (center) thanks Harold Robinson and Vicki Funk for a gift establishing an endowment toward research awards to people studying the Compositae collection, in 2015. (photo by Smithsonian Institution)
Right: Harold Robinson with Mauricio Bonifacino, Bertil Nordenstam, and Vicki Funk. (photo by Smithsonian Institution)
Robinson was also a specialist on the Dolichopodidae, a group of flies, with more than 30 publications on this side interest. Despite these broad interests in the sunflower family and flies, Robinson also kept up with work on the mosses, which was where he got his start in graduate school. He continued to occasionally study these plants using the same micromorphological techniques he employed elsewhere, published 50 research papers on bryophytes, and continued to curate these plants in the U.S. National Herbarium.
In 2010, his work was recognized with the Asa Gray award from the American Society of Plant Taxonomists.
When Harold Robinson described the monospecific Bishopanthus (Asteraceae) in 1983 (Phytologia 54: 63), he did so after receiving the collection shortly before publishing his review of the tribe Liabeae, and he did so without including an illustration of the species B. soliceps. Fast-forward to 2013, Robinson with Vicki Funk and Alice Tangerini published an article (PhytoKeys 30: 65-73) that included both an illustration by Tangerini (above) and a field photograph of the species by collector L.E. Bishop. The species has not been found since its original discovery in 1983 in Amazonas, Peru, in the mountains behind Tingo at 6,500 ft. Tangerini drew the species by resurrecting the fragments of the destroyed type in which all plant fragments were contained in a fragment folder. (photo on front page by L.E. Bishop)
Just checking a review of the Composite list of the catalogue of vasc pl of Bolivia I came to Harold Robinson. Since several years I and LPB had no more contact with him. I am really sad,that the great "maestro" had passed away. Harold with Angel Cabrera had been since starting the National Herbarium (LPB) in 1978 the essential authority and helped naming 1000 of specimens. We are so grateful and I will remember him for ever. Unfortunately Plant Press do not arrive to Bolivia, La Paz, as post service with foreign countries had been cancelled.
Posted by: w | 03/30/2021 at 07:46 PM