Biography

American botanist interested in tropical ethnobotany and floristics. In recent decades Michael J. Balick has worked primarily in Belize and Micronesia studying local healing practices and plants with medicinal properties. He began his career working on the flora and ethnobotany of Israel (1972-1973), and lived in Costa Rica where he helped build the Wilson Botanical Garden, now an Organization for Tropical Studies field station (1974-1975). Between 1975 and 1997 he worked in the Amazon region of South America studying palms and their local utilization.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania he studied as an undergraduate at the University of Delaware, receiving a BSc in agriculture and plant sciences (1975) having spent a year studying abroad at Tel Aviv University (1972-1973). Attending Harvard University as a postgraduate Balick was awarded a master's degree in biology (1976) and a PhD (1980) with a certificate from Harvard Graduate School of Business. Balick went on to work for The New York Botanical Garden, first as Executive Assistant to the President (1980-1989) and Assistant Curator, and later as Philecology Curator of Economic Botany (1989-). Since 1990 he has directed the Institute of Economic Botany, an institute which he co-founded with Sir Ghillean T. Prance in 1981. Balick has also been vice-president for Botanical Science since 2007 and at the time of writing (2011) holds adjunct teaching appointments at Columbia University, Fordham University, and City University of New York where he mentors graduate and undergraduate students in the fields of ethnobotany and ethnomedicine, phytochemistry, floristics and conservation biology.

Working in the remote tropics, as well as with immigrant cultures in New York City, Balick researches the traditional use of plants by indigenous cultures and the development of these resources to the benefit of such communities. In Belize his work contributed to the formation of Ix Chel Tropical Research Foundation along with the world's first ethnobiomedical forest reserve (1987). Between 1986 and 1996 he was amongst the leaders of a survey of Central American, South American and Caribbean flora sponsored by the US National Cancer Institute to search for plants with a potential activity against cancer and HIV/AIDS. Since 1997 Balick's research has focused on the Micronesian islands of Pohnpei, Kosrae, Palau and the surrounding atolls, documenting the diversity, local use and management of plant resources to create a region-wide plan for marine and terrestrial conservation.

With over 150 scientific papers to his name already, Balick has also published 18 scientific and general interest books, including Plants, People, and Culture: The Science of Ethnobotany (1998), Checklist of the Vascular Plants of Belize (2000) and Ethnobotany of Pohnpei: Plants, People and Island Culture (2009). In 2004 Balick was a recipient of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's International Award for Scientific Cooperation, during 2005-2006 he was a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and in 2009 was given the Distinguished Economic Botanist award from the Society for Economic Botany; a society which he has also presided over. In recognition of his service to the people of Pohnpei in helping to preserve ethnobotanical information of the island as well as its biodiversity, he was accorded the high title of Luhk En Kairoir Dolen Katau Nett in March of 2009.

Sources:
Personal communication, February 2011.