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Richard Schultes

Dr. Richard Evans Schultes was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of German immigrants. He first showed an interest in plants on his uncle's farm, amassing an impressive collection of New England flora. This boyhood fascination waned, as he grew older, replaced by a desire to become a surgeon. While at Harvard, however, his nascent medical career was nipped in the bud by a professor—Dr. Oakes Ames.

Ames taught a course with the prosaic title, "A Practical Introduction to Useful and Harmful Plants." While the title may have been mundane, the course and its teacher most emphatically were not. Ames perceptively noted his student's botanical gifts, and deliberately set out to engage Schultes' interest. He succeeded. In a matter of days, he had re-kindled the embers of Schultes' early interest in plants into a blaze that utterly consumed his plans for a medical career. Schultes would be a botanist.

In 1941, the National Research Council awarded Schultes a grant to visit Colombia and study the effects of arrow poisons used by the indigenous population. He was still in Colombia, exploring possible medical uses for the deadly arrow poison curare when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into World War II. Schultes reported back to the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá fully expecting to be drafted. Instead he was sent back to the Amazonian rain forest to revive the region's long-dormant rubber industry for the Allied war effort.

In his 50-year career, Schultes collected over 25,000 plant specimens and uncounted academic honors. The Director of Harvard's Botanical Museum, he received both the prestigious Tyler Prize and the World Wildlife Fund's Gold Medal. In his honor, The Richard Evans Schultes Award is presented annually to a leading ethnobotanist. He also authored many important publications, at least one of which gained notoriety due to a bizarre and completely unintended effect.

Schultes's most enduring legacy, however, is surely the legion of gifted students he taught during his 27 years at Harvard following his return from South America. That generation built on his pioneering work to make Ethnobotany a universally recognized and respected discipline.

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Richard Schultes

—From the Academy of Achievement

Recommended Reading

Ethnobotany: The Evolution of a Discipline edited by Richard Evans Schultes and Siri Von Reis.