From Plant Press, Vol. 27, No. 3, July 2024.
The José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany is named in honor of Dr. José Cuatrecasas, a pioneering botanist and taxonomist, who spent nearly a half-century working at the National Museum of Natural History. Cuatrecasas had a distinguished career devoted to systematic botany and plant exploration in tropical South America, especially in the Andes, and this award serves to keep vibrant his accomplishments and memory. The Department of Botany and the U.S. National Herbarium present this award at the Smithsonian Botanical Symposium to a botanist and scholar of international stature who has contributed significantly to advancing the field of tropical botany. 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.
This year the 21st José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany was presented to Peter F. Stevens, an accomplished scientist, botanist, and author.
Stevens most recently held joint appointments as a Professor of Biology, University of Missouri-St. Louis and Research Curator, Missouri Botanical Garden. After receiving a B.S. from Oxford University, he went to Edinburgh where he received a Ph.D. in 1971. His dissertation was simply titled Taxonomic studies in Ericaceae, but it was deceptively influential in influencing subsequent research on that family.
His first professional post was as a Forest Botanist in Papua New Guinea. There he collected plants mostly in the highlands, gained further experience with tropical Ericaceae, and developed interests in other primarily tropical families such as the Clusiaceae. His three years in New Guinea were influential in fostering his interests in plant families, identification, and tropical botany in general.
Leaving New Guinea, Stevens moved half-way around the globe to accept an appointment as an Assistant Curator at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, which had a long-standing interest in Asian (and Malesian) botany. Eventually, he became a tenured professor at the university. While at Harvard he also had teaching responsibilities and served as principal advisor to a number of graduate students interested in tropical plant systematics. He also began publishing on aspects of systematic philosophy, especially examining the conflicts between morphological character states and phylogenetic hypotheses.
Moving half-way across the continent to St. Louis in the late 1990s, Stevens continued his research and teaching but also was one of the principal architects in constructing the Angiosperm Phylogeny Website, which continues to be a remarkable and valuable tool for anyone interested in up-to-date information on the 400 plus families of flowering plants. Without doubt, Stevens has contributed in innumerable ways to advancing the field of tropical botany.
Laurence Dorr presented the medal to Stevens at the 21st Smithsonian Botanical Symposium at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, on May 17, 2024.
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); Robin B. Foster from the Field Museum (2017); Alan K. Graham from the Missouri Botanical Garden (2018); Sandra Knapp from the Natural History Museum in London (2019); Sebsebe Demissew from the Gullele Botanic Garden and Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia (2021); Fabián Michelangeli from the New York Botanical Garden (2022); and Rafaela Campostrini Forzza from Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2023).
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