Iltis named 1998 Distinguished Economic Botanist

Hugh H. Iltis, emeritus professor of botany, has been named the 1998 Distinguished Economic Botanist by the Society for Economic Botany.

Iltis was cited for “outstanding contributions” toward the scientific understanding of maize and its relatives, New World species of the caper family, and to the plant geography and floristics of Wisconsin, North America and the neotropics.

Iltis, who joined the UW–Madison faculty in 1955 and for many years directed the UW–Madison Herbarium, was a co-discoverer of teosinte, a rare wild relative of corn. He is also known as a passionate and uncompromising conservationist, an avocation for which he was also cited by the Society.