Richard Evans Schultes oral history

Richard Evans Schultes was born on January 12, 1915, in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended public schools before entering Harvard University in 1933. Schultes intended to pursue medicine but shifted his focus after taking a course in economic botany with Oakes Ames during his junior year. Schultes completed his A.B. in 1937 and went on to complete A.M. and Ph. D. degrees at Harvard in 1938 and 1941, respectively.

After receiving his doctorate Schultes accepted a position as a research associate at the Harvard University Botanical Museum. Later that year he received a 10-month travel grant from the National Research Council to study curare in the Amazon. Schultes was working in the field when he learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and subsequent American entry into World War II. He immediately traveled to the American Embassy in Bogotá, Colombia, to enlist. With Asian rubber plantations under Japanese control, Schultes was instructed to remain in the Amazon and utilize his botanical expertise to find alternative sources of rubber for the Allied Forces.

Over the next 12 years Schultes worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Bureau of Plant Industry and collected approximately 3,500 specimens of the Hevea rubber tree. In 1942 he was also awarded a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation to conduct ethnobotanical research. Most of his time in the Amazon was spent with indigenous tribes from whom he learned medicinal and economic uses of plants.

Schultes returned to Harvard in 1953 to become curator of the Oakes Ames Orchid Herbarium but traveled frequently to the Amazon basin. In 1958 he was appointed curator of ethnobotany at the Harvard University Botanical Museum. He held this position until 1967 when he became executive director. From 1970 until 1985 Schultes was director of the Museum. Beginning in 1970 he also taught classes at the Harvard Extension School. He was appointed Paul C. Mangelsdorf Professor of Natural Sciences in 1973 and Edward C. Jeffrey Professor of Biology in 1980. He was named Professor Emeritus when he retired in 1985.

Schultes married Dorothy Crawford McNeil, a professional opera singer, in 1959. They had three children: Richard, and twins Alexandra and Neil.

Schultes contributed to over 350 publications and served on editorial boards for several scientific periodicals. He was the recipient of the Tyler Ecology Prize and the World Wildlife Fund Gold Medal in 1984 and the Harvard Medal and the Linnean Medal in 1992. Three genera and over 120 species bear his name. In 1986 the government of Colombia designated a 2.2 million acre protected area "Sector Schultes" in his honor. He died in Boston on April 10, 2001.

Sources

Sequeira L. 2006. Richard Evans Schultes. Biogr. Mem. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 88:338-351.

Pfister DH, Solbrig OT, Wilson EO, Wood CE. Richard Evans Schultes: Memorial minute. Harvard Gazette, September 18, 2003.

Prance GT. 2001. Richard Evans Schultes, (12 January 1915-10 April 2001): A tribute. Econ. Bot. 55(3):347-362.