Peter H. Raven obituary: visionary botanist who transformed our understanding of plant diversity

Peter Raven advanced understanding of plant evolution, classification, and biogeography, explaining how plants diversified across the world. He helped place botany and biodiversity conservation at the center of urgent global challenges. He advocated for the importance of plants to human well-being and for science, education, and international collaboration to build a sustainable future. Born in Shanghai in 1936, he moved to San Francisco after Japan invaded China. He developed early interests in biodiversity as a child naturalist collecting butterflies, beetles, and plants. He joined the California Academy of Sciences at age eight, connected with botanists Alice Eastwood and John Thomas Howell, and published botany articles through the Sierra Club. He earned degrees at UC Berkeley and UCLA, taught at Stanford, and became director of the Missouri Botanical Garden in 1971.

"Raven went on to earn a bachelor's degree in biology at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1957 and a PhD in botany at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1960. He taught at Stanford University in California before assuming leadership of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St Louis in 1971, at age 35. At the time, the institution was modest in scope."

Read at Nature