PULLMAN, Wash. The late, world-renowned mycologist Charles Gardner Shaw served Washington State University for 36 years in the Department of Plant Pathology. The university’s mycological herbarium will be dedicated in his name in a public ceremony at 10 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 10, in the first floor foyer of Vogel Plant Biosciences Building on Stadium Way.
“Dr. Shaw’s 36-year career of service at WSU included outstanding accomplishments in research, teaching, administration and international service,” said Dan Bernardo, dean of the WSU College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences. “From 1961 through 1972, he served as chair of the Department of Plant Pathology, leading the department in an era of growth and prestige that established it as one of the premiere plant pathology units in the nation.”
One of Shaw’s major accomplishments was bringing together and substantially adding to the fungal collections in and around WSU. He organized the material into an internationally recognized, world-class mycological herbarium, according to those who proposed naming the facility in his honor.
Shaw taught and researched in the area of forest pathology and mycology, the biological study of fungi. His efforts resulted in more than 130 publications, two of which contain concepts that form the basis for classification of all the downy mildews on Gramineae.
He advised more than 20 graduate students during his career. His published host-fungus indices for the Pacific Northwest are considered seminal works for biogeography of fungi.
Shaw was twice chief-of-party on assignment for U.S. Agency for International Development-WSU with the Jordanian Ministry of Agriculture in the 1970s and ‘80s.