George A. Zentmyer Jr. | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1913-08-09)August 9, 1913 |
| Died | February 8, 2003(2003-02-08) (aged 89) |
| Resting place | Olivewood Memorial Park,Riverside, California |
| Education | A.BUniversity of California, Los Angeles (1935)
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| Occupation | Professor of Plant Pathology atUniversity of California, Riverside |
| Years active | 1962–1981[3] |
| Organizations | |
| Title | Professor Emeritus ofPlant Pathology[5] |
| Board member of | [3] |
| Spouse | Dorothy Anne Dudley |
| Awards | American Phytopathological Society's Lifetime Achievement Award |
| Signature | |
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George Aubrey Zentmyer, Jr. (August 9, 1913 – February 8, 2003) was an Americanplant physiologist andprofessor emeritus atUniversity of California, Riverside. He was known as one of the world's foremost authorities onPhytophthora.[7]
Zentmyer was born inNorth Platte, Nebraska to Mary Elizabeth Strahorn and George Aubrey Zentmyer, Sr.While an undergraduate atUniversity of California, Los Angeles Zentmyer was a sportswriter for theBruin.[8] He went on to graduate work atUniversity of California, Berkeley. Both Zentmyer's master's and doctoraltheses discussed thecytospora attacking theItalian cypress.[1][2]
Zentmyer started work in 1937 at the San Francisco office of theUnited States Department of Agriculture's Department of Forest Pathology where he studied the spread ofWhite Pine Blister Rust across the Pacific Northwest.[a] In 1940 Zentmyer transferred to theConnecticut Agricultural Experiment Station where he worked on developingchelation andfungicidal chemotherapy to treatDutch elm disease.[10] The results of his experiments withhydroxyquinoline were published inScience in 1944. That same year Zentmyer was hired at theUniversity of California Citrus Experiment Station to replace then-recently deceased William T. Horne.[11] Zentmyer was one of the Station's first employees to specialize outside of citrus plants.[12] He then began his career-long study ofPhytophthora cinnamomi which had been ruiningavocado crops across California at the time.[13] Aftercinnamomi had been isolated in South Africa in 1942 Zentmyer was subsequently able to prove it was behind the plague harming avocado trees.[14] Zentmyer began teaching plant physiology atUniversity of California, Riverside. in 1962. In 1963 he and Donald C. Erwin were awarded aUS$61,500 (equivalent to $631,645 in 2024) grant by theNational Science Foundation to study "Physiology, Nutrition, and Morphology of the Reproductive and Growth Processes of the Genus Phytophthora."[15][16] Zentmyer was recognized byUniversity of California, Riverside as faculty research lecturer for the 1963–1964 school year.[4]
Zentmyer was awarded aGuggenheim fellowship in 1965, during which he studied a pandemic sweepingeucalyptus trees in theJarrah Forest in westernAustralia.[17][6][18] In 1971 Zentmyer, along with Guggenheim fellow Peter H. Tsao and Donald Erwin, whom he had shared a National Science Foundation grant with years earlier, sought funding from theNational Academy of Sciences for an international survey ofPhytophthora they conducted across Africa and Latin America.[19] From 1974 to 1975 Zentmyer was the President of the Pacific Division of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science.[20]
Zentmyer was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1979.[17] From 1972 to 1994 he was an associate editor of theAnnual Review of Phytopathology. In 1981 Zentmyer retired from teaching and was awarded theAmerican Phytopathological Society's Award of Distinction after having been a longtime member and officer.[21] That same year theCalifornia Avocado Society gave Zentmyer a "special award of merit", only the third in their 65-year history, to recognize his work to save the avocado.[22] In 1983 he was a resident at theRockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center.[23]
In 2013 an eponymouscultivar ofPersea americana Mill was patented.[24][25] The "Zentmyer"rootstock was isolated in 1993 and underwent inoculation and testing for resistance toroot rot.[24][25]
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