American botanist and conservationist. Ray Fosberg helped to establish coral reef and island studies as an autonomous branch of science, and probably did more scientific work on more tropical islands around the world than any botanist of his generation. His total plant numbers exceed 66,000, in multiple sets, and include 40 species that bear his name. Born in Spokane, Washington, he grew up on his family's melon farm in Turlock, California, and received his BA in botany from Pomona College in 1930. He then worked as a botanist at the Los Angeles County Museum, studying the floras of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. The research, which included the islands off the coast of California and Baja California, sparked a lasting interest in island ecosystems. In 1932 he accepted an assistantship under Harold St John at the University of Hawaii, where he worked on a revision of the Hawaiian genus Gouldia A. Gray (Rubiaceae). In 1934 he and St John were members of the six-month Mangarevan Expedition to the South Pacific islands, during which they collected 15,000 plant specimens. He subsequently earned his PhD in 1939 from the University of Pennsylvania for a revision of the Polynesian species of Hedyotis L. (Rubiaceae). Hired as an assistant botanist with the United States Department of Agriculture, he was sent to Colombia during the Second World War to search for wild Cinchona L. and sources of quinine for American troops. He returned to the region in 1947 on a Guggenheim Fellowship to study the floras and vegetation of Central and South America, and Cinchona in particular.

In 1946 he spent six months in Micronesia conducting an economic survey for the U.S. Commercial Company. Re-immersed in the botany of island ecosystems, he began a 15-year career in the Military Geology Program of the U.S. Geological Survey, providing the vegetation sections for military geology maps of the Pacific islands. In the same year, 1951, he formed his lifelong research partnership with Dr Marie-Hélène Sachet. Together they produced vegetation studies for the newly formed Pacific Science Board of the National Research Council, and built an enormous database on island biogeography for the Coral Atoll Program, a collaboration between the South Pacific Commission and Pacific Science Board, which they published as Island Bibliographies (1955; Supplement, 1971). In his early days at the Pacific Science Board, Fosberg founded the Atoll Research Bulletin to promulgate the results of its scientific expeditions, but the journal quickly developed into the major repository for information on coral reefs and islands. In 1966 he and Sachet transferred to the Smithsonian Institution, initially in the Ecology Program, as special advisers in tropical biology, then in the Department of Botany. In 1978 Fosberg was officially retired from his position as senior botanist. This came over his objections, and until his death he continued, as a botanist emeritus, to work as actively as before.

In his long career, Fosberg produced about 700 publications on plant classification, plant distribution, ecology, and conservation, and on a range of special topics in natural history, from ornithology to botanical exploration. He enjoyed working on intractable genera, particularly of the Rubiaceae family, but his taxonomic interests were broad. Although best known for his descriptive treatments of the flora and vegetation of central Pacific atolls, Micronesia, and Hawaiian islands, and as co-editor of the Flora of Ceylon, he also contributed to the botanical knowledge of continental America, the humid tropics, and Caribbean islands. The publication Man's Place in the Island Ecosystem, which arose from a UNESCO-sponsored symposium Fosberg organised in 1961, is a classic in its field. At the time of his death he was at work on a project that had occupied him for decades: to locate and study Reinhold's and Forster's specimens from Cook's second voyage, which are scattered around the world in 27 herbaria, and to lectotypify the species that had been inadequately established. Fosberg first began writing on conservation issues in 1949, and from the mid-1950s led campaigns to protect island atolls, most notably Aldabra island, renowned for its population of giant tortoises, which was requisitioned as a military base during the Cold War. In the early 1970s he campaigned to limit the impact of U.S. missile testing programs in the Phoenix Islands and in the early 1980s, to block a bizarre proposal to develop Henderson Island into a millionaire's private refuge from nuclear attack. He also acted as a consultant to Marlon Brando on the management of Tetiaroa, the actor's vacation paradise in the Societies. Other important contributions to the cause of conservation were his founding of the Rachel Carson Council and co-founding of the (U.S.) Nature Conservancy.

At various times, Fosberg was president of the Organization for Flora Neotropica and of the International Society of Tropical Ecology; chairman of the UNESCO Humid Tropics Program; and member of the Standing Committee for Spermatophyte Nomenclature, the Managing Board of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy, the National Research Council, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Ecological Society of America, the Association for Tropical Biology, and the International Society for Reef Studies.

Sources:
T. Hichley, 1993, "F. Raymond Fosberg, 85, Tropical Plant Expert", New York Times, 29 September 1993
D.H. Nicolson, 1994, "Francis Raymond Fosberg (1908-1993)", Taxon, 43(1): 140-142
D. Mueller-Dombois, 1992, "F. Raymond Fosberg: An Appreciation", Pacific Science, 46(2): 107-110
D.R. Stoddart, 1994, "F. Raymond Fosberg, 1908-1993", Atoll Research Bulletin, 390-396: i-viii.