Peter Shaw Ashton oral history

Peter Shaw Ashton was born in Boscombe, Bournemouth, England on June 27, 1934, to Edna Marjorie (Knott) Ashton and Dudley Shaw Ashton. He spent his youth in forests in the south of England, exploring the colors and patterns found on insect wings. Ashton received his B.A. in biology in 1956, and his M.A. in biology and Ph. D in botany in 1960 from the University of Cambridge. He married Helen Mary Spence in 1958 and has three children.

Ashton served as Forest Botanist to the Brunei government from 1957 to 1962 and the Sarawak government from 1962 to 1966. He used the data he gathered from his work on tree species in Brunei for his graduate work, demonstrating qualitatively the relationship between habitat and species composition of forests. He developed working relationships with the local guides that would allow him to return for additional research projects in later years. In 1966, Ashton took a position as lecturer in botany at Aberdeen University and remained in Scotland until 1978. His family relocated to the United States in 1978 when he began his term as the director of the Arnold Arboretum and Arnold Professor of Botany at Harvard University. From 1978 to 1991, he served as professor of dendrology at Harvard. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1983. In 1984, Ashton began a collaborative project with scientist Stephen Hubbell to study forest plots in southeast Asia. The project evolved into the founding of the Center for Tropical Forest Science that expanded the original idea into a network of over forty forest plots over multiple continents. Ashton proposed new conservation areas as national parks, based on tree floristic evidence; these were legislated into formal existence following Sarawak's entry as a state within Malaysia.

From 1990 to 2000, Ashton served as a faculty fellow for the Harvard Institute of International Development. In 1998 he was named a faculty fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government Center for International Development. He was named the Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry in 1991 and maintained the post until his retirement in 2005. In 2006, Ashton was elected Honorary Fellow of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) during the annual meeting held in Kunming, China. In a 2007 Harvard talk, Ashton called for a holistic approach to forest conservation that includes both the large and small members of forest ecology as well as the people who live nearby and depend on forests for their livelihood. In 2015 the Peter Ashton Prize was created by the ATBC in his honor. He received the Japan Prize and the Sultan Quaboos Prize from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Ashton has named 244 plant species and published over three hundred publications. Peter Shaw Ashton serves as the Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry, Emeritus at Harvard University.

Sources:

Arnold Arboretum News. 2015. Peter Ashton wins prestigious book award for On the Forests of Tropical Asia. The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. Website ( https://www.arboretum.harvard.edu/peter-ashton-wins-book-award/ ). Accessed 16 April 2020.

IPNI (2020). International Plant Names Index. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Harvard University Herbaria & Libraries and Australian National Botanic Gardens. Website ( https://www.ipni.org/a/311-1). Accessed 7 May 2020.

Powell, A. 2008. Peter Ashton: A legacy written in trunk, limb and leaf. The Harvard Gazette. Website ( https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/07/peter-ashton-a-legacy-written-in-trunk-limb-and-leaf/). Accessed 23 April 2020.

Prabook. 2020. Peter Shaw Ashton. World Biographical Encyclopedia, Inc. Website ( https://prabook.com/web/peter_shaw.ashton/644291). Accessed 23 April 2020.

Reed, C. 2007. Honorable Forester. Harvard Magazine. Website (https://harvardmagazine.com/2007/09/honorable-forester.html). Accessed 23 April 2020.

Wayback Machine. 2010. Peter Shaw Ashton. Internet Archive. Website ( https://web.archive.org/web/20100627012847/http://www.huh.harvard.edu/ctfs/ctfs/pdf/PSA_CV.pdf). Accessed 16 April 2020.