History of UT Botany, Part 4: Billie L. Turner

January 9, 2024 • by Nicole Elmer
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Posing in 1970 with Perityle turneri (Asteraceae), one of many species named in Turner's honor. (Photo: Mike Powell)

While at Sul Ross, Turner’s early work was in grasses because, as he tells it, “no one there at the time could identify them so I took pride in being able to do that.” Ultimately, however, Turner would work with two angiosperm families, Asteraceae and Fabaceae.

When Turner came to UT in 1953, he was hired as an instructor. It was his first academic position, but not permanent. As he put it, then chairman of the botany department, Gordon Whaley, had told him, “If you write a book about legumes of Texas, we might take you on the department.” Turner did just that in about three months. This book was The Legumes of Texas and was the first book on botany UT had published. The book did well at the time since there was not much published information on Texas plants. Whaley followed through on his promise, but to give Turner tenure, he had another request.

Whaley asked Turner, who was around 30 at the time, to go to Africa for a year to work with plant physiologist and ecologist Homer Schantz, who was around 80. Turner did. “All it was was one fight after another, [between] an older man who had lost his mind and a younger man who had his,” he said about the experience. However challenging it might have been, Whaley followed through in his promise to Turner. Turner was promoted to Assistant Professor with tenure. He would be promoted to Full Professor two years later in 1959. Turner would later write about his experience with Schantz in the book Leader of the Pack.

All of this was happening around the time Turner was working on biochemical systematics, using chemistry to classify plants. Turner was also involved in new developments using chromosome numbers and subsequently chemosystematics to classify plants and examine evolutionary relationships. Collaborations with botanists like Ralph Alston, Jeffrey Harborne and Tom Mabry would result in two books: Biochemical Systematics (1963 with Alston) and Plant Chemosystematics (1984 with Harborne). Turner was also a bit ahead of the curve in his early career by predicting that protein sequencing and DNA studies would resolve phylogenetic relationships in plants.

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