Ghillean T. Prance records

Ghillean Tolmie Prance was employed by the NYBG from 1963 as a research assistant until his departure in 1988 as Director of the Institute of Economic Botany and Senior Vice-President for Science. A systematic botanist who has made an enormous contribution to the inventory of the Amazon flora and the ethnobotany of the Amazon region, Much of his 25 year career at the NYBG was spent conducting extensive fieldwork in the Brazilian Amazonia. Dr. Prance has participated in expeditions to Turkey, Surinam, Colombia, Venezuela, French Guiana and Brazil.

Ghillean Tolmie Prance was born July 13, 1937 in Brandeston, Suffolk, England. He credits his two aunts, both amateur botanists, with instilling a love of botanical exploration in him at an early age. He attended Oxford University from 1952 to 1963 when he received his D. Phil. In Forest Botany from the Commonwealth Forestry Institute. His dissertation is entitled "A Taxonomic Study of Chrysobalanaceae". In the preparation of this work, he came to the NYBG herbarium to study and was offered a position as research assistant to help identify the backlog in this family of specimens.

Dr. Prance worked from 1963 to 1966 as a research associate and was promoted to Associate Curator in 1966. In 1968 he was appointed the B. A. Krukoff Curator of Amazonian Botany. In 1975 he became the NYBG Director of Botanical Research and served as Vice-President of the NYBG from 1977 to 1981. In 1981 he became Senior Vice-President for Science and was appointed the first director of the Institute of Economic Botany. He would hold both of these positions until his departure from the garden in 1988 to return to his native England and assume directorship of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. He was offered the position of Director of the NYBG at this time but turned it down in favor of Kew. His tenure at Kew has been marked by the development of Kew's infrastructure for fund-raising and the enhancement of its educational and tourist facilities.

During his tenure at the NYBG, Dr. Prance maintained visiting and adjunct professorships at two local institutions, Lehman College CUNY (1968-1988) and the Yale University School of Forestry (1983-1988). He also taught in 1978 at Aarhus University in Denmark, in 1982 at the Universidad Nacional in Bogota, Colombia, in November 1986 at the Nanjing Institute for the Comprehensive Utilization of Wild Plants in China and in March 1987 at the University of Texas in Austin. From 1974 to 1988, he was Professor of Botany at the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazonia in Manaus, Brazil.and from 1973 to 1975 he served as the first director of the Instituto's graduate training program in tropical botany, the first of its kind in the region. Dr. Prance has served as graduate advisor for twenty students during his tenure at the NYBG and two of them, Douglas Daly and Andrew Henderson went on to become members of the NYBG scientific staff themselves.

In addition to his other duties, Dr. Prance was an active and valued member of many organizations. He served as Deputy Director from 1972 to 1975 and then as Executive Director from 1975 of the United Nations program entitled Organization for Flora Neotropica, He served as Chairman of the Tropical Rainforest Task Force Species Survival Commission (IUCN) from 1982 to 1988. He has been a fellow of the Linnean Society since 1961 and the Explorers Club since 1978. He was elected a Corresponding Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences in 1976 and in 1988 he was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. He was President of the Association for Tropical Botany from 1979 to 1980 and President of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists from 1984 to 1985. In 1981 he received an honorary degree from the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazonia, Manaus and in 1983 he received an honorary degree from Goteborgs Universitet in Sweden. NYBG awarded him a Distinguished Service Award in 1986 and the Henry Shaw Medal was awarded to him in 1988. He was elected a member of the Corporation of the New York Botanical Garden in 1981.