Charles B. Heiser

Below is the announcement about the Memorial Service for Charles Heiser on Aug. 8 at Indiana University in Bloomington. Dr. Heiser was SEB President in 1978 and received the Distinguished Economic Botanist Award in 1984. Four of our past Presidents were students of Dr. Heiser: Hardy Eshbaugh, Barbara Pickersgill, Greg Anderson, and Susan Verhoek. The Charles B. Heiser Mentor Award was established in 2009. Charley, best known for his work on sunflowers and the origin domesticated plants and agriculture, was a giant among Economic Botanists. We will miss him.

Dear Colleagues and Friends of Charley Heiser,

As most of you know, Distinguished Professor Emeritus Charles B. Heiser Jr. passed away on June 11 after a long illness. Charley spent his entire faculty career, 63 years long, at Indiana University. Although he formally retired in 1986, he continued to be very active professionally and in the life of this department, including publishing a steady stream of papers and books. During his career, he mentored 29 Ph.D. students and almost as many Masters students, many of whom went on to stellar careers of their own. For more on Charley's life, please see the following link: http://sites.bio.indiana.edu/~newsletters/2010_Jul/Heiser.html

You are all invited to a Celebration of Professor Charles Heiser’s life, which will take place at 10:30 AM, Sunday, August 8, in the Jordan Hall atrium. Several of Charley’s students and colleagues will be sharing stories of their time with him and his influence on their careers. In addition, while members of his family will also be speaking or playing music in his honor. A reception with refreshments will be held in the atrium immediately following the formal part of the Celebration.

We are producing a memory book containing photos and reminiscences, as well as a slide show for this event. If you have any stories or photos that you would like to share, please forward them to Jeremy Bennett (jebennet@indiana.edu) or Kathy Wyss (kwyss@indiana.edu) as soon as possible. Please send us these materials by July 15 if possible (we will do our best to incorporate later submissions). Reminiscences can be as brief as you wish, but should be no more than two pages in length. We would prefer to receive them as Word documents, but can accommodate other formats, including directly as email text. If possible, photographs should be sent as high resolution scans. If this proves impractical, you may send us hard copy prints or 35 mm slides (send to Jeremy Bennett, Department of Biology, 1001 E. 3rd St., Jordan Hall 142, Bloomington, IN 47405).

You will soon receive another email giving information about hotel rooms in Bloomington that weekend and about ground transportation from the Indianapolis airport to Bloomington.

We hope you can join us at this special event and look forward to seeing you on August 8.

All my best,

Roger Innes
Professor and Chair of Biology
Indiana University