BY ELAINE RAY
A memorial service for John Hunter Thomas, professor of biological sciences, has been scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 24, at Stanford Memorial Church. Thomas, one of the faculty members instrumental in establishing the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, died July 20 of complications from Alzheimer's disease at age 71. He was residing in a Menlo Park nursing home at the time of his death.
"John was a good friend," said Ward Watt, a faculty colleague who remembered Thomas as a "very devoted undergraduate teacher. He touched many lives both educationally as well as scientifically."
Watt added that Thomas taught his popular plant systematics and ecology course to hundreds of students over the decades. "It wasn't just a course, but the foundation of a lifetime interest in ecology and systematics on the part of students who took it," Watt said.
Born in Germany to American parents, Thomas attended the Kent School in Connecticut and graduated in 1945. He earned his undergraduate degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1949 and his master's and doctoral degrees from Stanford in 1949 and 1959. Thomas also served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War.
While he was a graduate student, Thomas began working as an assistant curator for the Dudley Herbarium. He also served as a lecturer in what was then the Division of Systematic Biology until he was appointed associate professor in 1969. When the herbarium's collections were moved to the California Academy of Sciences in the mid1970s, Thomas,who by then was the herbarium's director, accepted a joint curatorial appointment there and remained on Stanford's faculty as well. He retired in 1995.
Friends and associates remember Thomas as a curator, botanist, population-control advocate, student adviser and amateur book printer who cared deeply about the university and loathed the campus Eucalyptus trees. "We should plant oaks instead, because eucalyptus aren't native to this area, and they break down the quality of the ground. But the gardeners just won't listen to me at all," he once told the Stanford Daily.
Paul Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies, who called Thomas a "friendly curmudgeon," said that for 35 years, he and Thomas had lunch together every Saturday they were in town. Ehrlich also recalls that after he and his wife, Anne Ehrlich, published a field guide to butterflies, they received a review titled "Yet Another Butterfly Book" in the mail from an obscure European journal. "It turned out that [John] had set it in his own printing press in his garage," Ehrlich said, recalling that Thomas, the department's historian, printed up little things for departmental events. "He had wonderful stationery he made: The Cardboard Carton Corpse and Cadaver Container Corporation."
Although his work focused on botany, Thomas also was an activist on the issue of over population. He was an outspoken critic of the Catholic Church's stand against birth control, and in the late 1960s wrote and delivered several letters and speeches denouncing an encyclical issued by Pope Paul VI on the matter.
"We feel that no leader, religious or otherwise, who speaks irresponsibly can be allowed to go unchallenged," Thomas and two other Roman Catholic biologists wrote in a letter sent to 150 U.S. Catholic bishops. "We feel that Pope Paul was not speaking for many leading Roman Catholic theologians, a large number of the members of the hierarchy, nor for the majority of informed Roman Catholic laymen." The authors sent the letter, accompanied by an equally stinging statement signed by more than 2,600 American and Canadian scientists, to the bishop of San Francisco with a request that he forward it personally to Pope Paul VI.
Thomas' research centered on floristic botany, which attempts to understand the origins of the flora of a region in the context of the evolutionary processes that work there over a period of time. He was particularly interested in the characterization of the vascular plants of Alaska, California and Baja California and on the history of botanical exploration and collecting in western North America. His dissertation, "Flora of the Santa Cruz Mountains of California," was published by the Stanford University Press in 1961.
Philippe Cohen, administrative director of Jasper Ridge, came to Stanford just a few years before Thomas retired. He recalls that Thomas' "enthusiasm and knack for drawing students' attention to important features and unique characteristics in plants" were legend. "He did a lot of teaching in terms of bringing his classes out and in terms of training some of our early docents," Cohen said.
Thomas was a member and former president of the California Botanical Society and the editor of its journal, Madroño. He was an enthusiastic participant and official delegate to the nomenclature sessions of the International Botanical Congresses from 1964 to 1987. As a book lover, two of his most rewarding duties at Stanford were his memberships on the editorial board of the University Press and on the Academic Council's Committee on Libraries. He also was an active member in the Associates of the Stanford University Libraries.
Thomas is survived by his wife, Susan; his sister, Mary Louis Thomas, of Seattle; nieces Lanell Aoki of Seattle and Kathleen Crosser of Montecito; his motherinlaw, Lois M. Davidson; sisters-in-law Jane Hills and Jeanne Kline, and brother-in-law Roland Kline, all of Marin County.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be
given to a favorite charity or to the John H. Thomas Memorial Fund
in care of the Stanford University Department of Biological
Sciences. The fund will help support a public memorial lecture
series. SR