Obituary

Obituary: Professor Rudolf Schmid

Rudolf “Rudi” Schmid, Professor at the University of California, Berkeley for 31 years and Taxon ‘Reviews and Notices’ editor for 30 years, died January 4^th 2022 of complications due to Parkinson’s Disease.

Although born in Massachusetts, Rudi was a Californian through and through. He attended Cal State Polytechnic College in Pomona, The University of California, Davis (MA in Botany), attended the University of Michigan for his Ph.D., but then was back in California at UC Berkeley for the remainder of his career. At Berkeley, Rudi was Professor in the Botany Department then the Department of Integrative Biology, as well as Associate Curator of the University Herbarium. As a professor, Rudi’s research focused on reproductive plant anatomy, particularly for taxa found in California and in similar Mediterranean climates. His specialty was the Myrtaceae. For a quarter of a century Rudi taught multiple courses, including plant biology, anatomy of vascular plants, evolutionary morphology of land plants, plant taxonomy, diversity of plants and fungi, natural history of California plants and fungi, and introduction to California plant life. His teaching career influenced the lives of thousands of undergraduates. 

Rudi also was an indefatigable field botanist and plant collector. He traveled non-stop throughout the western US as well as internationally from 1964–2003; and in doing so he contributed extensively to the collections of the UC Berkeley Herbaria and the herbarium of the California Botanic Garden at Rancho Santa Ana. He especially loved bringing students on field trips to the White Mountains of California and Nevada, and to desert areas of Southern California and Baja California. He had an extraordinary love for the Bristlecone Pine (Pinus longaeva D.K.Bailey), so he made a special effort to locate and document stands throughout the West. His field trips with colleagues and students were legend, not only for his singular ability to find exceptional examples of native plants, but for the out-and-out fun he had doing so. His sense of humor, that was so prominent in his writings, was manifest during his field trips. Destinations were revealed slowly, rare plants were “discovered”, and of course the evenings around the campfire were memorable. Rudi never tired of his explorations of his beloved California flora.

In addition to his contribution to the study of plant anatomy, Rudi made significant contributions to the field of plant microtechnique and botanical history. As a side project during his undergraduate career, he published a research article in Science magazine on the ultrastructure of the fossil tracheids of gymnosperms, and later in his career published papers describing new or modified methods of preparing tissues for microscopic investigation. Rudi had a remarkable memory for details of plant structure, systematics, nomenclature, and botanical history, with ecological flower anatomy as his noteworthy specialty. He once expressed that there was no greater pleasure for him than looking at plant tissues through a microscope. This profound interest is manifest in the enormous number of papers he published and of anatomical slide preparations he made during his career—slides of hundreds of plant families, all of which have been annotated and documented, and which will be donated to the University of California Herbarium and the New York Botanical Garden.

A few selected titles of the hundreds of research papers and commentaries Rudi wrote is appropriate to list here to show the breadth of his study and influence:

• Electron microscopy of wood of Callixylon and Cordaites.
• The debt of humour in science to Lewis Carroll.
• Functional interpretations of the morphology and anatomy of sepal nectaries.
• Stockwell’s bleach, an effective remover of tannin from plant tissues.
• Finger dancing: Defining function keys for WordStar and other word processors.
• The fascination with carnivorous plants in juvenile literature.
• Naturalization of Sequoiadendron giganteum (Cupressaceae) in montane southern California.
• The terminology and classification of steles: historical perspective and the outlines of a system.
• Which-hunting, or whatever happened to that?
• Agnes Arber, neé Robertson (1879-1960): Fragments of her life, including her place in biology and in women’s studies.
• The occurrence of scalariform perforation plates and helical vessel wall thickenings in wood of Myrtaceae.

He was a life member of a number of plant societies, including the International Society of Plant Morphologists, the Linnean Society of London, and the California Native Plant Society, was on the editorial boards of Orchid Biology, Plant Science Bulletin, Taiwania, and of course Editor of the ‘Reviews and Notices of Publication’ (RevNot) column of the international journal Taxon from 1986–2016. During his tenure at Taxon Rudi published reviews of over 1,000 scholarly books. His astonishing ability to critically read, distill, and review books covering nearly all subjects related to plant systematics was legendary, and one of the reasons many scientists subscribed to Taxon. His reviews were famous for his concise writing style, quirky humor, and references to Lewis Carroll, Orson Welles, Start Trek, and other popular sources. Here are a few examples:

• “Regrettably, many of the other terms appearing in the text are loosely, not concisely defined, for instance, “spore” and “seed”—terms that many laypersons confuse, and even by Leila the “botanist” on the old Star Trek episode “This side of paradise” that was first telecast on 2 March 1967.”
• Moreover, sloppy language occasionally appears, to wit: fungal hyphae “spread over the fungi’s food and suck out the goodness” —good grief, Charlie Brown!
• Upon reviewing a book about Darwin, he reported the book’s opening sentence “February 12, 1809—Charles Darwin opens his eyes for the first time!”. At the end of his typically detailed and clear review Rudi wrote “And, incidentally, while the book does kill off Darwin, it does not end with “Charles Darwin closes his eyes for the last time!—April 19, 1882”.
• “It is as if plant tissues are dominated by an Amazonian race of cells all apomictically producing their kind. Many shoot apical meristems have a ‘central mother cell zone’, but a ‘central father cell zone’ remains to be discovered. I would like to mother the following new, non-sexist terminology for plant anatomy and morphology: ‘Parent cells’ divide to form ‘child cells’ or, better, ‘sibling cells’…”

In 2011, Taxon (the journal for the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT)) commemorated Rudi for “100 issues, 25 years” stating:

“We in IAPT stand in awe of Rudi Schmid, editor of Reviews and Notices in Taxon for the past years. Through issues of the journal, he has diligently, creatively, and lovingly investigated the world’s plant systematic literature and kept us all better informed. As one of our members has remarked, ‘I am a member of IAPT because of Rudi Schmid!’ We salute him for his amazingly detailed, and humorous excursions into the literature of our field.”

However, Rudi was so much more than a dedicated scientist and curator, he was an exceptionally kind and generous person. He maintained close ties with former students and cultivated close friends and colleagues around the world. One former student and fellow traveler, now eminently successful in academia noted “His infectious laugh and smiles at jokes were often the best part, and they will be greatly missed by all who knew him.”

Rudolf Schmid was the quintessential brilliant academic, eccentric colleague, and dear friend. In 2011 Rudi wrote in Taxon:

“The first 100 columns spanned 25 years, 5 PCs, 1 PC laptop, 1 Mac, 7 printers, innumerable monitors/modems/mice/keyboards/ etc., 5 TVs, 4 cars, 4 cats, 2 dogs, etc. Nevertheless, to this computer, quasi-Luddite the two constants in the ever-changing digital world of the past 25 years have been two ancient DOS applications, which I continue to use daily: WordStar (ver. 5.5) and GOfer (ver. 1.0). (after transfer between myriad text processors) readers perhaps wish that my frequent bad puns and jokes would fall by the wayside. When will I give up the column? I know not, other than to say in modification of the old adage: “I’ll take it one year at a time.” Doing RevNot is still too much fun—to quit yet.”

That final Taxon year for Rudi was 2016; so it seems fitting to write here: “Rudolf Schmid closes his eyes for the last time!—January 4, 2022.”

Steven Ruzin

Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California Berkeley, 381 Koshland Hall, Berkeley CA 94720-3102, U.S.A.

ruzin@berkeley.edu