Peter Raven

Peter Raven
Peter Raven, after receiving the Addison Emery Verrill Award
Born	Peter Hamilton Raven June 13, 1936 (1936-06-13) (age 80) Shanghai, China
Nationality	American
Fields	Botany, Evolutionary biology, Biodiversity
Institutions	Stanford University, Missouri Botanical Garden Washington University in St. Louis
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Los Angeles
Notable awards	International Prize for Biology (1986) Volvo Environment Prize (1992) Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (1994) International Cosmos Prize (2003)

Peter Hamilton Raven FMLS (born June 13, 1936) is a botanist and environmentalist, notable as the longtime director, now President Emeritus, of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

On June 13, 1936, Raven was born in Shanghai, China to American parents. An uncle of his father's was, for a time, one of the wealthiest Americans in China, but was later jailed in a banking scandal. That incident and Japanese aggression in China led the Raven family to return to San Francisco, CA in the late 1930s.

After becoming a member of the California Academy of Sciences while still a youth, Raven went on to graduate with a BSc in Biology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1957 and a Ph.D. in botany from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1960.

After teaching at Stanford University, Raven went on to become Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden in 1971. In 2006, his position was renamed President and Director. Raven announced his plans to retire in 2011, to coincide with his 75th birthday and his 40th year at the Garden. Peter Wyse Jackson was appointed as Raven's successor at the Missouri Botanical Garden in September 2010.

Raven is possibly best known for his work Butterflies and Plants: A Study in Coevolution published in the journal Evolution in 1964 which he coauthored with Paul R. Ehrlich. Since then he has authored numerous scientific and popular papers, many on the evening primrose family, Onagraceae. Raven is also an author of the widely used textbook Biology of Plants, now in its eighth edition, coauthored with Ray F. Evert and Susan E. Eichhorn (both of University of Wisconsin, Madison).