Biography

Mexican-born plant collector and mathematician. George Hinton is the third generation of his family to devote himself to collecting plants in Mexico, following in the footsteps of his father, James Hinton, and British grandfather, George Boole Hinton. His main interest is collecting the flora of the gypsum outcrops of Nuevo León and Coahuila. These have yielded an impressive number of narrow endemics, many of which are endangered because of habitat destruction, overgrazing and over-collecting.

George Sebastian Hinton was born in Monterrey, Mexico, and obtained a BSc (1970) and MSc (1972) in mathematics at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He returned to his home, Rancho Aguililla, in Nuevo León, in 1973 after a year of postgraduate studies in Edinburgh (U.K.). In 1979, long before computerised databases became the norm, Hinton developed one for his Apple II Plus on which to record the contents of his father's herbarium. The system now has over 24,600 entries and images of about 12,000 specimens (maintained on a more sophisticated machine).

Hinton is also mounting 4,000 specimens from south-west Mexico collected jointly by his father and grandfather. He began his own collections in 1984, which have to date yielded 65 new species. Thirteen of these were collected with his father, five with his son George Boole, three with Jonas Lüüthy and the rest with field assistants, principally Cleto Lugo and also Epifanio Lugo. Of these, 33 have been named hintoniorum or hintonii. In addition, Leucophyllum alejandrae G.L. Nesom and Glandularia alejandrana B.L. Turner were named after Hinton's wife; Sophora juanhintoniana B.L. Turner after his brother; Muhlenbergia jaimehintoniana P.M. Peterson & Valdés-Reyna for his father and Erigeron heleniae G.L. Nesom for his mother. Several species have also been named after his sons and daughters, while the genus Geohintonia Glass & W.A. Fitz Maurice was named after George S. Hinton himself, alongside several species in other genera. When his son, also George Boole Hinton (1989-), was a boy he helped G.S. Hinton collect and had three species named after him including Salvia booleana B.L. Turner.

With James Hinton, G.S. Hinton published the "Checklist of Hinton's collections of the flora of south-central Nuevo León and adjacent Coahuila" (1995), and with Billie Turner a description of Verbesina zaragozana var. intermedia. Hinton has also published descriptions of Mammillaria luethyi and Turbinicarpus booleanus (1996).

Sources:
Personal communication, April 2009.