Testimonials for Pioneer Member Arthur Galston
Stan Roux – Arthur Galston was a brilliant and very productive plant biologist with outstanding teaching skills and a strong social consciousness. Although we did not co-author any papers together, he helped mentor both my Ph. D. and post-doctoral research, and his advocacy freed me to do my doctoral research off campus. Throughout my subsequent career, I strove to achieve his amazing ability to clearly explain complicated ideas, and 29 years after my Ph. D., when my university awarded me its highest teaching award, I wrote to Art to tell him that I dedicated this honor to him, “the most eloquent of all my biology teachers”, and to thank him for the life-long inspiration he was to me.
Jane Shen-Miller – The halt for use of the defoliant “Agent Orange” (herbicide 2,4-D/2,4,5-T/trace dioxin) in Vietnam, called for by Arthur Galston and banned in 1971 by President Richard Nixon, was absolutely timely and cogent. I so admired his outspoken and well-spoken oratories. He was one of the superbly schooled “homonologists” of the Caltech group. His popular textbook with James Bonner, Principles of Plant Physiology, was used during my student years. My admiration for Art grew further from his opening the liaison of the American Botanical Society with the Chinese Science & Technology Association. In 1978, the US botanical delegation was one of the very first to be invited to China, and for me a glorious experience (China being the country of my birth from which I had been absent for 30 years). In 2004, during a NASA conference on gravitational biology in New York City, Art told me of his pride at being the link, together with Peter Raven, for introducing me to the UCLA paleobiologist J. William Schopf. Schopf and I have happily celebrated a marriage of 40-plus years. I am grateful to Arthur W. Galston in many ways.