Thorne, Robert Folger (1920-)

Herbarium
Natural History Museum (BM)
Collection
Plant Collectors
Resource Type
Reference Sources
Contributor
Natural History Museum (BM)
First name(s)
Robert Folger
Last name
Thorne
Initials
R.F.
Life Dates
1920 -
Collecting Dates
1938 - 1987
Specification
Plant collector
Groups collected
Spermatophytes
Organisation(s)
CAS (main), CU (main, currently BH), IA (main), LAE (main), P (main), PC (main), RSA (main), AD, ARIZ, ASU, B, BH, BISH, BM, BP, BRI, BRY, C, CAN, CANB, CHAP, CHAPA, CHR, CM, COLO, CONN, CPH, CS, CSLA, DAO, DAV, DPU, DS, DUKE, E, ENCB, F, FLAS, FSU, FTG, G, GA, GAS, GEO, GH, GZU, HNT, HO, HSC, HUJ, IBE, IJ, ILH, ILL, INIF, IRVC, ISC, ISTC, K, KE, KLU, KUN, KY, KYO, L, LA, LASCA, LE, LIL, LL, LP, M, MAK, MARY, MEX, MEXU, MHA, MICH, MIN, MO, MOS, MT, MTMG, NA, NCU, NEB, NHA, NLU, NS, NSW, NY, OBI, OS, OSC, PE, PH, PR, PSP, PTBG, PTGB, PUA, QRS, RM, SAP, SBBG, SD, SEV, SHIN, SING, SMU, SOM, SP, SPC, SYD, TAD, TAES, TAI, TAIF, TASH, TEX, TUC, TUR, UB, UC, UCR, UCSB, UMO, US, USF, UT, UTC, UWL, VDB, VLA, W, WAG, WCW, WIS, WS, WTU, WYAC, Z
Countries
Australasia: Australia, New Caledonia, Papua New GuineaNorth American region: Canada, United StatesEurope: Finland, Norway, Sweden, United KingdomIndian region: IndiaMalesian region: IndonesiaCaribbean region: JamaicaCentral American Continent: MexicoChinese region: Singapore, Taiwan
Associate(s)
Alava, Reino Olavi (1915-) (co-collector)
Breedlove, Dennis Eugene (1939-) (co-collector)
Dahlgren, Rolf Martin Theodor (1932-1987) (co-collector)
Davidson, R.A. (1927-) (co-collector)
Dilmy, Anwari (1915-1979) (co-collector)
Everett, Percy C. (fl. 1950-1965) (co-collector)
Gilliland, Hamish Boyd (1911-1965) (co-collector)
Gray, Edward Charles Gordon (1930-) (co-collector)
Henrickson, James Solberg (Jim) (1940-) (co-collector)
Henry, E.E. (fl. 1960) (co-collector)
Huang, S.-F. (fl. 1987-2000) (co-collector)
Huang, Tan-C. (1939-) (co-collector)
Lathrop, Earl W. (1924-) (co-collector)
Moran, Reid Venable (1916-) (co-collector)
Oettinger, F.W. (fl. 1967) (co-collector)
Prigge, Barry A. (1947-) (co-collector)
Proctor, George Richardson (1920-) (co-collector)
Rao, A.N. (fl. 1985) (co-collector)
Razi, Basheer Ahmed (1916-) (co-collector)
Rosendal-Jensen, S. (fl. 1978) (co-collector)
Smith, Lindsay (fl. 1966) (co-collector)
Thorne, M.Z. (fl. 1969-1980) (co-collector)
Tilforth, C.W. (fl. 1976-1977) (co-collector)
Wang, K.-C. (fl. 1987) (co-collector)
Womersley, John Spencer (1920-1985) (co-collector)
Boyd, Steve D. (1957-)
Biography
The U.S. botanist Dr. Robert F. Thorne (known as Bob) is Taxonomist and Curator Emeritus at the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden. He is also Professor Emeritus at Claremont Graduate University, California. Thorne was born at Spring Lake, New Jersey, and graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in botany in 1941. He went on to earn a master's degree in economic botany at Cornell (1942) before serving as a navigator in World War Two. Following the war he resumed his botanical work, gaining a PhD in 1949 at Cornell. He married Mae Zukel in 1947.

Thorne joined the University of Iowa in 1949 as Assistant Professor of Botany. At the time of his leaving Iowa in 1962 he was Professor. Thorne's next long-term position was at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden and Claremont Graduate School, where he continued to work following his retirement in 1987. As well as working and collecting plants widely across the United States, Thorne has travelled to Europe, Australia and the Malesian region carrying out botanical research.

As a Fulbright Scholar in 1959 he undertook postdoctoral work at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, where he studied the plant communities of New Caledonia, Australia and New Guinea. He is also an expert on the Californian flora, on which subject he produced a 31-page essay, "The vascular plant communities of California", which is still essential reading. As a biogeographer, he has pursued floristic work in Alta and Baja California and other areas. He is especially interested in aquatic plants and major disjunctions in the geographic ranges of vascular plants. Thorne is recognised for drawing up a synoptic classification of flowering plants, known as the Thorne System, in 1992 (revised in 2000). He has been the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including the 2001 Asa Gray Award from the American Society of Plant Taxonomists and the Merit and Centennial Awards (in 1996 and 2006 respectively) from the Botanical Society of America.

Sources:
C.W. Hamilton, 2002, Systematic Botany, 27(1): 1-3.
References
Brummitt, R.K. & Powell, C.E., Authors Pl. Names (1992): 643; Holmgren, P., Holmgren, N.H. & Barnett, L.C., Index Herb., ed. 8 (1990): 396; Vegter, H.I., Index Herb. Coll. S (1986): 917; Vegter, H.I., Index Herb. Coll. T-Z (1988): 1018;
Thorne, Robert Folger (1920-)
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