American botanist. Norman Hill was born in Mobridge, South Dakota, and studied botany at the Universities of South Dakota (BSc 1934), Oklahoma (MSc 1936), and California, Berkeley (PhD 1939). He served in the South Pacific with the U.S. Air Force during the Second World War, and after demobilisation taught at the University of New Mexico, John Hopkins University, and, finally, the University of Oklahoma, where he remained until his retirement in 1981.

Boke worked in the field of structural botany, his most noteworthy contributions involving the development and interpretation of the cactus gynoecium. He was an excellent field botanist, intimately familiar with the flora of Mexico, which he took pleasure in introducing to his students on the spring flora course offered by the university. Starting in 1960, he travelled the northern states of Mexico and southward as far as Tehuantepec and Oaxaca. He was editor of the American Journal of Botany from 1970 to 1975 and published all but a few of his papers in this journal. One of the exceptions was an article in Bioscience (33: 187-199) in 1962 entitled "A botanist looks at Mexico." He was a member of the Cactus and Succulent Society of America and of the Botanical Society of America. The cactus genus Normanbokea Kladiwa & Buxb. and the cactus species Epithelantha bokei L.D. Benson, are named after him.

Sources:
Anon, 1996, “In Memoriam: Norman Hill Boke 1913-1996”, Plant Science Bulletin, 42(2): 37
L.W. Mitich, 1997, “Norman Hill Boke: 14 March 1913 - 8 February 1996”, Cactus and Succulent Journal (U.S.), 69(1): 15-16.