(ST. LOUIS) To honor Dr. Peter Raven's legacy in science, conservation and botany, the Board of Trustees has formally dedicated the Peter H. Raven Library at the Missouri Botanical Garden. The dedication celebrates the tenure of the man who transformed the Missouri Botanical Garden in his nearly four decades as president and director. The Garden Library is globally recognized as one of the most comprehensive libraries of botanical literature in the world.
Raven is one of the world's leading botanists and a champion of efforts to protect biodiversity and create a more sustainable world. As president and director of the Missouri Botanical Garden for nearly 40 years, Raven led its transformation into a corner-to-corner horticultural masterpiece and a world leader in plant science and conservation. He has been called on to advise White House administrations and received a remarkable list of awards, including the U.S. National Medal of Science, the country's highest award for scientific accomplishment and the International Cosmos Prize for biology from the government of Japan. In 1994, Time magazine honored Raven as a "Hero for the Planet."
"The Garden has achieved an enormous level of impact under the leadership of Dr. Peter H. Raven, a man who has so profoundly transformed this institution that there is no simple way to express it," said Missouri Botanical Garden Board Chairman Arnold Donald. "He has taken every single aspect of the Garden's work and improved upon it exponentially. The Garden is changed through his leadership. The city of St. Louis is changed. And, the world is changed."
"To say Peter is a visionary does not begin to illustrate his vast accomplishments at the Missouri Botanical Garden as well as for the international botanical community," said Missouri Botanical Garden President, Dr. Peter Wyse Jackson. "He is an outstanding scientist who has also contributed his pioneering spirit and unique determination to every endeavor with which he has been associated."
Located in the state-of-the-art headquarters of the Garden's Monsanto Center research building at 4500 Shaw Blvd., the Missouri Botanical Garden Library is vital to the institution's mission "to discover and share knowledge about plants and their environment in order to preserve and enrich life."
The Missouri Botanical Garden Library began as a small collection of horticultural books owned by the Garden's founder, Henry Shaw. Shaw augmented the collection through his friendships with leading 19th century naturalists, botanists and other scientists. Today, through purchases and gifts, the collection has burgeoned to more than 200,000 monographs and journals and 6,000 volumes of rare books, including many with full-size plant illustrations important to botanical, horticultural and natural history sciences.The Library's vast holdings are available to Garden staff, students and visiting scientists and researchers from around the world seeking to identify, classify and conserve plants. Books and journals are largely stored in row after row of compact shelves in a room with carefully controlled temperature, humidity and security. Rare books, such as the first edition, first printing of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, are housed in the Rare Book Room, which offers environmental controls and stricter security.
The Garden's Board of Trustees, in partnership with the community, will work to establish an endowment for the Peter H. Raven Library to ensure that the collection will remain relevant, accessible and well maintained. The endowment will fund a library staff; costs of managing a book conservation laboratory and digitizing books, so they are available anywhere in the world with internet connectivity; and the maintenance of library equipment and supplies in perpetuity. The Peter H. Raven Library was formally dedicated at a private ceremony on Sunday, Apr. 17 at the Missouri Botanical Garden.
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