Alwyn Howard Gentry
Alwyn Howard Gentry ( born January 6, 1945 in Clay Center, USA; † August 3, 1993 in Guayaquil, Ecuador ) was an American botanist. His special field of interest was the classification of Bignoniaceae, to which he made through his work a great contribution. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " AHGentry ".
Life
Alwyn Gentry was born on January 6, 1945 in Clay Center, Kansas. From high school to the community, he received his degree in 1963, after which he began his studies at Kansas State University. From there he received in 1967 two degrees: a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and a Bachelor of Science degree in Botany and Zoology.
During the summer of 1967, he was on his first research trip to Costa Rica, where he first undertook research on the family of Bignoniaceae ( Bignoniaceae ). His master's thesis to the genus Tabebuia he completed in the fall of 1968 and in January 1969 received the title of Master of Science. Following this, another research trip to Costa Rica, Panama and Mexico began.
The work on his doctoral work began in the fall of 1969 at Washington University in St. Louis. This work, entitled " An Eco - Evolutionary Study of the Bignoniaceae of Southern Central America," he concluded in December 1972. As early as October 1972 Gentry was hired as an assistant to the curator of the Missouri Botanical Garden. There he spent the rest of his career, and start from there to a variety of expeditions to South America, South Africa and Madagascar.
The results of his taxonomic studies of the Bignoniaceae South America should appear in a three-part series of "Flora Neotropica ". The first volume of this series appeared in 1980, the second in 1992, a third was not completed. He also performed a large number of families for the " Flora of Panama " and wrote the arrangements of the Bignoniaceae for several floras.
On 3 August 1993 Gentry died in a plane crash during an expedition through Ecuador. In addition to Gentry, the pilot, the ornithologist Albert Theodore Parker III and the president of the local group Fundación Natura Eduardo Aspiazu died.
Ehrentaxa
The plants Anthurium gentryi Croat. and Syngonium gentryanum Croat. have been named after him.