"Biodiversity, Sustainability and Cornell" is the topic for Missouri Botanical Garden Director Peter H. Raven in the 2004 Jill and Ken Iscol Distinguished Environmental Lecture on Thursday, April 29, from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. in Call Alumni Auditorium of Kennedy Hall at Cornell University.

Also open to the public at no charge is the seminar titled "How Many Species Will Survive the 21st Century?" April 30, from 4 to 5 p.m. in Bache Auditorium of Malott Hall. The seminar is offered in conjunction with the Biogeochemistry and Environmental Biocomplexity (BEB) Seminar Series.

The Iscol lecture series brings to campus prominent scholars, newsmakers, scientists and leaders to discuss environmental issues of paramount importance to humankind. Speakers are chosen by a faculty committee that represent a cross-section of academic disciplines. During his visit to campus, Raven also will participate in a graduate student luncheon, a morning discussion on the role of biology in the 21st century and an afternoon discussion of sustainability and Cornell, all on April 30. More information about this year's program can be found at http://www.environment.cornell.edu or by calling (607) 255-7535.

In St. Louis, Raven is both the Englemann Professor of Botany at Washington University and, for three decades, director of a botanical garden with more than 5 million specimens. Under his leadership, the garden pioneered botanical research in Latin America, Africa, Asia as well as North America. He also is chairman of the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration and co-editor of "Flora of China," a joint Chinese-American project to document all the plants of that nation.

Raven and his scholarship have been recognized by election to scientific academies in more than a dozen nations -- among them are Argentina, Brazil, China, Denmark, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. In this country, he was a member of the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology during the Clinton administration, and in 2001 he received the National Medal of Science, the highest U.S. award for scientific accomplishment.

He is chair of the National Research Council's Division of Earth and Life Studies, which includes biology, chemistry and geology, and is a past president and chairman of the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the largest organization of professional scientists in the world.

Growing up in San Francisco, Raven recalls prowling vacant lots for interesting butterflies and caterpillars until this interest turned to things bugs eat -- plants. He earned his B.S. degree at University of California-Berkeley and his Ph.D. at UCLA in 1960, before holding Guggenheim and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowships, authoring more than 400 scientific publications and 16 books and receiving honorary degrees from universities in this country and throughout the world.

To the more than 750,000 visitors each year to Missouri Botanical Garden, Raven is the man behind the splendid horticultural displays. To biological scientists, Raven is known for his broad research approach that spans genetics, ecology, biogeography and phylogeny. Conservationists revere Raven for his work in preserving endangered plants and his outspoken advocacy for a sustainable environment. Among college students, Raven is probably better known as the co-author (along with Washington University Professor George B. Johnson) of the best-selling text Biology , now in its sixth edition. Other books by, or co-authored by, Raven include Biology of Plants , the internationally best-selling textbook in botany, and Environment , a leading text on that topic.

When Raven was named a "Hero for the Planet" by Time magazine, that publication said: "Instead of cultivating one garden, he looks to everyone's. He protects, collects, lobbies, studies, preserves and expands his territory. He networks like a press agent but believes it is up to individuals to keep what's living living."

Interviewed by Alan Alda for the television program Scientific American Frontiers , Raven said: "If there would be a single thing that we could do to support global sustainability in the future, it would be to bring our fellow citizens and ourselves to our senses about the fact that we live on a single planet, Earth, with magnificent diversity, run by people in something like 200 different nations, and that we all are managing this beautiful planet together."

He told Time magazine: "When it ends up, the world is not going to be one homogenized place. It's going to have bright spots, richer places and more beautiful places. And the reason that will happen is that individuals took responsibility and did something."

In choosing his Iscol Lecture title, Raven clearly expects that one of the beautiful places -- with a worldwide perspective and mission -- will be Ithaca and Cornell.