Looking back — thinking ahead
Join us in celebrating Iowa State University's 150th anniversary! During the year-long celebration, we will reflect on the people and events that helped to make Iowa State a premier university in the plant sciences. Iowa State has proud tradition in agriculture and plant sciences, and we will highlight some significant happenings
However, we must make the disclaimer upfront that the Plant Sciences Institute played no part in shaping that history. We are a new organization established just seven years ago. Yet the Institute was built on the shoulders of these giants from the past.
In each newsletter for the next year, we will devote a column to reminisce about plant science luminaries and their legacies. We decided to spread out these columns over the year, because there is so much other exciting news about current happenings to cover — news about bioenergy, biofuels, plant and human health and so forth. So we will do both — look back and think ahead.
There have been many great plant scientists at Iowa State, some of whom we've heard much about — George Washington Carver, Ada Hayden, Louis Pammel to name a few. We will top out our series with George Washington Carver, not just because he was a great plant scientist, but because his ideas translate so well into today's thinking about biorenewables and biobased products.
But we will also cover others who might be less obvious - not lesser lights, but less well publicized. Our look back in this issue highlights George Sprague with mention of Merrill Jenkins. The two were pillars in maize breeding and Sprague is credited as a discoverer of hybrid corn - a finding that forever changed agriculture in Iowa.
