Missouri Botanical Garden President Emeritus Peter Raven speaks at Whitney R. Harris Center’s World Ecology Award Gala in 2010. Raven, who passed away on Saturday at age 89, was a longtime supporter of the center and the Department of Biology at UMSL. (Photo by August Jennewein)
Peter Raven became a towering figure in the field of botanical science while promoting biodiversity conservation around the world during his nearly four decades leading the Missouri Botanical Garden.
Raven, who served as president from 1971 to 2010, is credited with growing the Garden into an international leader in botanical research, one that today maintains active projects in roughly 40 countries around the globe.
His accolades include a National Medal of Science, fellowship in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and 25 other Academies of Science around the world, an International Prize for Biology from Japan, more than 20 honorary doctorates and too many awards and medals for achievement or distinguished service to count. In 1999, Time magazine named him a “Hero for the Planet.”
Peter Raven shakes hands with famed biologist and World Ecology Award recipient E.O. Wilson at the gala in 2018. (Photo by August Jennewein)
Raven, who passed away Saturday at the age of 89, also left a lasting legacy at the University of Missouri–St. Louis through his support of the Department of Biology and its long-standing partnership with the Missouri Botanical Garden through the Whitney R. Harris World Ecology Center.
“It’s hard to say what might have happened, because you can’t rewrite history, but he was the main instigator and promoter of the doctoral program at UMSL,” said Professor Emeritus Robert Marquis, who came to the university shortly after the doctoral program was established in the late 1980s.
At the time, Raven served as a member of the University of Missouri Board of Curators. He believed strongly in the need for a biology PhD program at UMSL and helped differentiate it from other doctoral programs by pushing for its focus on tropical ecology and conservation. It has come to serve as a training ground for numerous researchers connected with the Garden.
With the doctoral program in place, UMSL faculty members, including Marquis, Victoria Sork and Stephen Mulkey, together with St. Louis community supporters, came up with the idea to launch the International Center for Tropical Ecology in 1990. Through the center, they aimed to support talented students, initially from Latin American countries, by providing them with fellowships, research and travel grants and other scholarships.
The center quickly earned the backing of Raven and others at the Garden. Its international emphasis closely aligned with his own philosophy.
“When I came to the Garden, whenever anybody wanted to work in any country, I always said you have to include native people with you,” he said in an interview earlier this year.
Others jumped on board to make the center a reality, including benefactors such as Jane Harris, Whitney R. Harris – for whom the center was later renamed – and Robert R. Hermann.
“It wouldn’t have been possible without Peter Raven’s support,” Marquis said. “We were piggybacking on the fame of the Missouri Botanical Garden.”
That connection has certainly helped UMSL recruit talented international students, among them current Missouri Botanical Garden President Lúcia Lohmann.
The Harris Center later expanded its partnership to also include the Saint Louis Zoo while broadening its reach around the world. To date, it has assisted more than 350 students from some 50 countries in their pursuit of master’s degrees or PhDs in conservation and ecology science.
Peter Raven was on hand to help honor recording artist and activist John Denver when he received the first World Ecology Award at UMSL in 1990. (Photo courtesy of Whitney R. Harris World Ecology Center)
“My students really, really benefited from the partnership,” Marquis said. He cited the access students received to the Garden’s library and herbarium as they worked through their studies and their research as well as help with securing living arrangements and scholarships that allowed them to fill funding gaps and complete their degrees.
Many of those alumni have returned to their home countries to lead research programs, advise governments and shape conservation policies in places in the world where biodiversity is most under threat.
Raven also had a role, along with Hermann, in establishing the World Ecology Award, which recognizes eminent individuals who have made significant contributions to the protection of the global environment and a better understanding of the balance between human habitation and the Earth’s biodiversity. It is presented at a gala that serves as a significant fundraiser to support the center’s activities, and Raven’s connections helped increase community engagement in the event.
The award was renamed for Hermann in 2022. Among the award’s more than two dozen recipients are recording artist and activist John Denver; scientists Jane Goodall, Sylvia Earle and Edward O. Wilson; activists and philanthropists such as Ted Turner, Harrison Ford, Teresa Heinz, now-King Charles of the United Kingdom and Prince Albert II of Monaco; and Raven himself, having received the honor in 1996.
“When he retired and now that he’s passed away, it leaves a big hole for ecology and conservation,” Marquis said. “There are very few people like him ever. Given the current environmental crises facing us, we need many new Peter Ravens to step forward to take his place.”
