Richard Evans Schultes

Richard Evans Schultes (1911–2001) was widely considered the preeminent authority on hallucinogenic and medicinal plants, and is regarded as the “father of ethnobotany.” He published ten books and more than four hundred and fifty scientific articles, and in 1992 received the gold medal of the Linnean Society of London, which is often equated with the Nobel Prize for botany. In South America, a mountain bears his name, as does a national preserve. Schultes’s research into hallucinogenic plants made some of his books cult favorites among drug experimenters in the 1960s. His findings also influenced such cultural icons as Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, William Burroughs, and Carlos Castenada.