What’s Really Happening on Earth, and What Should We Do About It?

Peter Raven

President Emeritus of Missouri Botanical Garden

Peter H. Raven, a leading botanist and conservationist, is president emeritus of the Missouri Botanical Garden and George Engelmann Professor of Botany Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis, having taken up both positions in 1971 and retired in 2010.  In addition, he is a Trustee of the National Geographic Society and Chairman of the Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration.

Dr. Raven has been recognized as St. Louis Man of the Year (1989) and with the St. Louis Award (1988), and has been awarded honorary doctorates by a number of universities including Washington University, St. Louis University, the University of Missouri-Columbia, Webster University, Maryville University, Harvard, Yale, Leiden, and Michigan State. In 2001, he received the National Medal of Science, the highest award for scientific accomplishment in the United States.  He served for 12 years as Home Secretary of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, to which he was elected in 1977, and is also a member of the academies of science in a number of other countries, including China, India, Russia, the U.K., Brazil, and Australia.  He is the author of many books and scientific papers, including Biology of Plants (co-authored with Ray Evert and Susan Eichhorn, W. H. Freeman and Company/Worth Publishers, New York), the internationally best-selling textbook in botany, of which the eighth edition appeared in 2011.