Biography

Polish-born botanist, Jerzy Rzedowski has lived for many years in Mexico where he has realized a prolific botanical career within a number of academic institutions, becoming a naturalized Mexican in 1955. Originally from Lwów, Poland, he moved to Mexico in 1947 and is married to Graciela Calderón, a native of Guanajuato.

Soon after his arrival he matriculated into the National Polytechnic Institute (I. P. N.) where he studied the biological sciences between 1949 and 1952 and graduated two years later with a thesis on the vegetation of Pedregal de San Angel. Continuing on to doctoral studies Rzedowski researched the flora of San Luis Potosí at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) from 1953 to 1960. During this period he also worked as a plant collector and botanical explorer for Syntex Laboratories (1953-1954), as a teacher at the Autonomous University San Luis Potosí and director of their Instituto de Investigación de Zonas Desérticas (1954-1959), and following this as a researcher and teacher at the Postgraduate College of Chapingo (1959-1961). Rzedowski also spent a year in France and during his stay specialised in phytosociology at the University of Montpellier (1957-1958) before receiving his PhD in 1961.

Since then he worked as a professor at the I.P.N.'s National School of Biological Sciences alongside his wife, a fellow botanist, and spent several months as an associate researcher at the University of Michigan. Together they have travelled the length and breadth of Mexico in the relentless search of herbarium specimens. Embarking upon a 25 year project to create a manual to the plants of the Valley of Mexico they and their collaborators gathered specimens from some 50,000 individual plants. The pair coordinated and edited the Flora fanerogámica del Valle de México which was published in three parts between 1979 and 1990 with a second, revised edition produced in 2001.

Since 1984 the couple have been based at the Institute of Ecology's Centro Regional del Bajío in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán. From here they began another epic project managing and editing the Flora del Bajío y de regiones adyacentes. Using grants from different national sources, Rzedowski has researched the flora of his adopted country. Responsible for over 200 publications on Mexican vegetation, including 7 books, amongst his most important contributions are Vegetación de México (1978) and a book on the diversity and origins of Mexican phanerogamic flora (published in 1991). Also creating works of historic interest, in 2008 he co-authored Los principales colectores de plantas activos en México entre 1700 y 1930.

As of 2009 Rzedowski's personal collection consists of more than 54,000 numbers deposited in herbaria inside and outside of Mexico and he is also responsible for founding and developing two such organisations: SLPM of the University of San Luis Potosí and IEB of the Institute of Ecology in Michoacán. He has been on the editorial committee for 10 scientific journals, is editor-in-chief of Acta Botanica Mexicana and has directed some 60 student theses, both undergraduate and postgraduate. In 1960 he was amongst those organising the first Mexican Botanical Congress and the same year was involved in the reformation of the Botanical Society of Mexico. He has received a vast number of prizes and recognitions for his contributions in this field, which include honorary doctorates from the San Nicolás de Hidalgo University in Michoacán and the Autonomous University of Chapingo. A great number of plants bear the specific epithet rzedowskiana or rzedowskii including four Orchidaceae species as well as members of 37 other families, for example the Rubiaceae species Psychotria rzedowskiana Borhidi.

Sources:
Personal communication, October 2009.

Sources:
C. Anderson, 1996, "Jerzy Rzedowski - Recipient of the 1995 Asa Gray Award", Systematic Botany, 21(1): 1-2.