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Torn Between Nature and Lab: A Dying Breed of Plant Scientists?

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Progress in Botany Vol. 78

Part of the book series: Progress in Botany ((BOTANY,volume 78))

Abstract

In his life as a scientist, E. Beck addressed questions, concerning a very broad spectrum of disciplines in plant science. He likes research in the laboratory as well as in the field. Admitting that specialization is inevitable given the complexity of the systems we deal with, he is not flagging to encourage his students and colleagues to go back and consider the entire system once in a while for verification of the reasonability of their research questions and approaches.

Preamble

Having been asked to report on 55 years of my life as plant scientist is a great honor for which I am very grateful to Ulrich Lüttge, and which I would like to pass on to the numerous friends, colleagues, and students to whom I feel deeply indebted for their contributions to my projects and ideas, and vice versa for sharing their projects with me. It is a pity that space limitation constrains my presentation to the more complex subjects and to leave out many projects and experiences which, while challenging my skills, enriched my life as human being and as scientist as well. Unforgettable are, e.g., the three expeditions with the group of soil scientists led by my friend Wolfgang Zech to the Himalaya where we tried to reconstruct landscape history around the Annapurna massif from soil cores and pollen diagrams (Zech et al. 2001a, b). Thinking of Nepal and the Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu is also not possible without mentioning the fruitful cooperation in plant molecular biology with my friend Tribikram Battarai (Beck et al. 2007) and his doctoral fellow Deepak Pant. I apologize for not expanding to the fruitful and long-standing collaboration with Prof. J. C. Onyango PhD (e.g., Netondo et al. 2004a, b), and his students from Maseno University (Kenya) and to the fantastic revival of my experiences on Mt. Kilimanjaro with my friends Andi and Claudia Hemp. These names stand for many others whom I could not mention for shortage of space and I hope that they would forgive me. To illustrate the environments of my professional life and its relationship with the time spirit and with academic and social events, I include a few snapshots, termed “interludes” in the text. As this contribution is dedicated to research, I will abstain from expanding my experience in academic teaching which in the retrospective was inherently positive, whenever I had to do with students. Special highlights were the botanical fieldtrips to many exciting regions in Europe, Africa, and Australia. Representatively for such fieldwork, I refer to the outstanding Summer Schools of the German Studienstiftung in the Alps where teaming up with my friend Ulrich Lüttge, we could introduce highly interested students to the exciting life of plants in the stressful alpine environment.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    At that time plant taxonomy (without emphasis in phylogenetic relationship) was differentiated from plant systematics, aiming at elucidating phylogenetic relations.

  2. 2.

    Title of a book by Yomo Kenyatta, the first President of Kenya after its liberation.

  3. 3.

    The up to 6 m tall Lobelia rhynchpetalum from Ethiopia was the first of the giant Lobelias which could be brought to blossom in our tropical alpine greenhouse of the University of Bayreuth. Now, it flowers every year, mostly in winter and serves as object for further ecophysiological studies.

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Selected Books

  • Beck E, Bendix J, Kottke I, Makeschin F, Mosandl R (eds) (2008) Gradients in a tropical mountain ecosystem of Ecuador. Ecological studies, vol 198. Springer, Heidelberg, 525 pp. ISBN: 978-3-540-73525-0

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  • Schulze E-D, Beck E, Müller-Hohenstein K (2005) Textbook: plant ecology. Springer, Heidelberg, 702 pp. ISBN: 3-540-20833-X

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  • Strnad M, Pĕc P, Beck E (eds) (1999) Advances in regulation of plant growth and development. Peres Publishers, Prague, 258 pp

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Acknowledgements

Finally, I am anxious to cordially thank my coworkers and colleagues, with many of them I became friends. I had an exciting time in Munich and especially in Bayreuth, where as a professor of the first hour, I could realize several of my ideas, e.g., the establishment of an ecological botanical garden at the University of Bayreuth, or the first biological graduate college in Germany. In most cases I found a sympathetic ear in the boards and administration of the University. I am deeply grateful to the funding agencies, in particular to the German Research Foundation (DFG), which provided the financial means to work on my ideas and at the same time supporting the training and qualification of students and coworkers. It was (and still is) a give and a take and even in the rare cases, when an application failed, I am convinced of a fair treatment. Particular thanks go also to my long-standing coworker Christiane Reinbothe, who joined my department in 1998 and finally was the scientific coordinator of the DFG-commission on biodiversity research until 2015. Last but not least I would like to cordially thank all those sympathetic colleagues to whom I owe my highly acknowledged honors. This is not the place to expand on the support of my work by my family, for which I am particular grateful and whose backup I hardly can overstate.

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  1. Department of Plant Physiology, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, 95447, Germany

    E. H. Beck

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  1. E. H. Beck
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  1. Depto. Biología Molecular y Bioquímica, Universidad de Málaga Dept Biología Molecular y Bioquímic, Málaga, Spain

    Francisco M. Cánovas

  2. Department of Biology, TU Darmstadt , Darmstadt, Germany

    Ulrich Lüttge

  3. Ecophysiology of Plants, School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan, Technische Universität München LS Ökophysiologie der Pflanzen, Freising, Bayern, Germany

    Rainer Matyssek

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Beck, E.H. (2016). Torn Between Nature and Lab: A Dying Breed of Plant Scientists?. In: Cánovas, F., Lüttge, U., Matyssek, R. (eds) Progress in Botany Vol. 78. Progress in Botany, vol 78. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/124_2016_2

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