Boyd R. Strain

MS 1961, Botany		After serving in the U.S. Army, Laramie native Boyd Strain came to UW with a BS from Black Hills State College, South Dakota. He remembers fondly the small, dedicated faculty of the Botany Department, who led their "cadre of five graduate students through weekly seminars and research projects in the newly renovated Aven Nelson Building. Under the gentle but persistent guidance of Dr. Hank Northen, I learned how to teach and how to communicate. It was one of the best periods of my life." His rigorous training in the scientific method and the opportunity he had to teach undergraduates in General Botany labs served him well through his PhD studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. When he completed that degree in 1964, Strain worked for five years on the botany faculty of the University of California, Riverside. In 1969, he became an associate professor of botany at Duke University, and is now a professor. His research interests include the physiological ecology of plants and plant responses to environmental stresses. Strain was elected president of the American Institute af Biological Sciences in 1987-88. He was the founding chairman of the American Foundation for the Biological Sciences, and has been director of the Philip L. Boyd Desert Research Center at the Harry C. James San Jacinto Mountains Reserve. He was recently director of the world-famous Duke Phytotron, a state-of-the-art research facility for growing plants under very specific environmental conditions. His research has yielded 111 articles in scientific journals, and numerous book chapters. In addition to editing four books, he has served on editorial boards for some of his field's outstanding publications.