John Hunter Thomas (March 26, 1928 – July 20, 1999) was an American botanist, professor of biological sciences at Stanford University, curator and director of the Dudley Herbarium, and joint curator at the California Academy of Sciences. He was known for his study of plants in the Sonoran Desert, the Santa Cruz Mountains, and the Alaska North Slope, and for his history of botanical exploration in Washington, Oregon, and California. His doctoral research on the plants of the Santa Cruz Mountains was published as a guide to the vascular plants of coastal, central California, and was recognized as a standard reference work for regional flora. It was used for decades as teaching material for courses in systematic botany and the ecology of vascular plants at Stanford. Thomas helped establish the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve and was a primary contributor to what later became the Jasper Ridge Oakmead Herbarium (JROH). In total, Thomas collected more than 20,000 plant specimens for herbaria throughout his career.
Biography Thomas was born in Beuthen, Germany, on March 26, 1928, to American parents Roy, a mining engineer, and Lucile Thomas. He had a younger sister, Mary Louise Thomas. Thomas spent his early childhood in Poland. In 1939, his family moved back to the United States, taking up residence in New England. He graduated in 1945 from Kent School in Connecticut, and earned his bachelor's degree from the Caltech in 1949. After completing his undergraduate work at Caltech, Thomas spent the next decade as an intermittent graduate student at Stanford University (MA, 1949; PhD, 1959) broken up by active military service. His master's thesis focused on the taxonomy and distribution of the evening primrose family of flowering plants in the Sonoran Desert. In 1950, he made a preliminary identification of two species of Onagraceae. That same year, he joined Stanford botanist and faculty member Ira Loren Wiggins to study the plants in Point Barrow, Alaska. From 1951 to 1952, Thomas served as an officer in the United States Navy Reserve during the Korean War after being called to active duty. On October 7, 1951, he was wounded on the Gearing-class destroyer USS Ernest G. Small during the attack on Hungnam, North Korea. The ship hit a mine, damaging the bow, killing 9, and wounding 18. Thomas survived, but for the rest of his life he carried shrapnel embedded in his body. From 1956 to 1958, Thomas taught at Occidental College. With Wiggins as his advisor, Thomas completed his dissertation, informed by the plant collections of William Russel Dudley, on The vascular plants of the Santa Cruz Mountains of central California in 1958, with Stanford publishing it as a book in 1961. His 1958 dissertation became a standard reference work for regional flora. It would later be used for decades as teaching materials for advanced courses in systematic botany at Stanford. Wiggins, who became director of the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory in 1950, later co-authored A Flora of the Alaskan Arctic Slope (1962) with Thomas. Between 1965 and 1969, Thomas spent his summers as a visiting associate professor at the Flathead Lake Biological Station, a year-round, ecological research and education center run by the University of Montana. From 1961 to 1969, Thomas lectured at Stanford, becoming associate professor from 1969 to 1977. He was made professor in 1977, staying there until his retirement as professor emeritus of biological sciences in 1995. From 1961 to 1965, Thomas served as the associate editor of the American Fern Journal. He was the president of the California Botanical Society from 1975 to 1976, and previously, editor of their journal Madroño from 1963 to 1972. Thomas participated as a delegate to the International Botanical Congress from 1964 to 1987. He was also a fellow of both the California Academy of Sciences and the Arctic Institute of North America. Thomas served on the Academic Council's Committee on Libraries and the Associates of the Stanford University Libraries, and was an editorial board member for the Stanford University Press.
Dudley Herbarium
After Frederick E. Terman became Stanford university provost in 1954, there was a strong push towards biomedicine and biochemistry, particularly in terms of the potential for new federal funding available to the university for cellular and molecular biology research. Terman's administrative focus on these government grants led to the elimination of the Division of Systematic Biology in June 1965. This loss of funding paved the way for the eventual transfer and merger of the 850,000-specimen Dudley Herbarium collection from Stanford to the CAS Herbarium collection of 600,000 specimens. Thomas became associate curator of the Dudley Herbarium in 1962. Soon after, curator Roxana Stinchfield Ferris retired, leaving Thomas as curator from 1963 to 1972, becoming director of the herbarium from 1972 until 1995. In 1969, Thomas began working as a part-time joint curator at the Academy. The planned move and transfer of the specimen collections from Stanford to the Academy was eventually completed in 1976. Overall, Thomas collected more than 20,000 plants throughout his career for the Dudley Herbarium, with specimens taken from Alaska, Baja California, California, and Montana. Duplicate specimens from this collection were also deposited with the California Academy of Sciences and the California Botanic Garden (RSA-POM, Herbarium of Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden and Pomona College).
Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve
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