OBITUARIES

Clanton C. Black

Clanton Candler Black, Jr. Photo courtesy of Betty Black.

Aboard the RV Alpha Helix off the Great Barrier Reef. From left to right, Leonard Muscatine, Andrew A. Benson, and Clanton. Photo courtesy of A. A. Benson.

In Argentina, at a sucrose conference. Clanton, on left, and Donald B. Fisher. Photo courtesy of W. H. Outlaw, Jr.

In Uzbekistan, collecting seeds of C4 plants in the Kysyl Kum Desert. Vladimir Pyankov on left, Clanton on right. Photo courtesy of Elena Voznesenskaya.

Professor Clanton Candler Black, Jr., passed away on August 14, 2011, in Athens, Georgia.

Clanton was born on November 27, 1931, in Tampa, Florida. He grew up in Gainesville, Florida, married his Sunday school sweetheart Betty Dantzler, did his BSA degree (1953), served in the army for two years (1953–1955), earned his MSA (1957) and PhD in agronomy (1960) (“Some Effects of 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic Acid on the Carbohydrate Metabolism of Etiolated Corn Seedlings” with Tom Humphreys) at the University of Florida in Gainesville, and did postdoctoral work at Cornell with Martin Gibbs (1960–1962) and at the Charles F. Kettering Research Foundation Laboratory in Yellow Springs, Ohio, with Tony San Pietro (1962–1963). From 1963 through 1967 he served as a staff scientist at the Kettering Foundation and as an assistant professor of biology at Antioch College. In 1967 he joined the biochemistry faculty at the University of Georgia in Athens where he taught, with the exception of three years when he chaired the Department of Botany, until the time of his death.

Clanton was fascinated by agronomy, the biochemistry of photosynthesis, teaching, and travel, and he combined those interests successfully into an exciting and rewarding career. Clanton was a true Southern gentleman. We are told that he ate everything served to him anywhere he traveled. He never lost his southern drawl: one wonders how he was understood outside of the southern United States. His research interests ranged from C3, C4, and CAM metabolism to photosynthetic phosphorylation, herbicides, ecophysiology, nitrogen, sulfur and calcium metabolism, photorespiration, morphology, and plant yield. He sailed on two photosynthesis research expeditions to the Great Barrier Reef; worked on cold resistance in potatoes in Peru; and studied low-temperature photosynthesis in Antarctica, sugarcane in Hawaii, and rice in China. He participated in four C4 photosynthesis expeditions to Uzbekistan and Russia and in five expeditions on global climate change and photosynthesis to Mongolia. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Tbilisi, Georgia, and Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, and a guest professor at the Northeast Forestry University in Harbin, China.

Gerry Edwards credits Clanton with introducing him to photosynthetic carbon metabolism and C4 photosynthesis. Nancy Carnal remembers Clanton’s lectures in which he transmitted to his students an historical view of the key advances in the field of photosynthesis peppered with stories of the controversies and arguments that eventually drove advances, and the personalities of research colleagues, all more instructive for what they subtly said about progress in science than for the particular detail. Gale Buchanan notes that even though Clanton’s research was oriented more to basic biology, he never lost his excitement in practical agriculture. Bill Outlaw remembers Clanton’s kindness to young people and recalls an occasion where Clanton (with humor) eased the anxiety of a first public speaking session, and that Clanton undertook personally to improve the situation of scientists around the world, in particular where resources were not abundant. One of us (SCH) also credits Clanton with providing the summer research opportunities that established a lifelong study of plant biochemistry, and many of us recall Clanton’s sage advice to “not let the grass grow under our feet.” He will be missed by all who had the privilege of knowing him.

Clanton was the consummate organizer. Immediately on reaching the Gibbs lab in Ithaca he organized a trip to Niagara Falls. It was Clanton who organized the surprise Gibbs 75th birthday bash and managed to find the cigar store Indian that Gibbs proudly displayed in his living room ever after. Gerry Edwards and Nancy Carnal remember fishing trips, and Jim Siedow remembers canoe trips from the headwaters of the Ogeeche River all the way to the Atlantic Ocean jointly with several southern labs.

Clanton served the scientific community in a number of ways. He served ASPB (then ASPP) as secretary, president, and an elected member of the Executive Committee. He served the Southern Section as secretary–treasurer, chairman, and member of the Executive Committee. He served on a number of national and international committees and boards. From 1971 to 1981 he sat on the editorial board of Plant Physiology, and from 1980 to 1992 he was an associate editor. From 1978 to 1985 he was the feature editor of Weeds Today (the journal of the Weed Science Society of America) and a member of its editorial board. From 2005 to 2008 he served on the editorial board of the Mongolian Journal of Biological Sciences. In 1974 he sat on the editorial board of the Iranian Journal of Agricultural Research. In 1979 he was vice chair, and in 1982 chair, of the Gordon Research Conference on Carbon Dioxide Fixation by Green Plants.

Clanton was a Fellow of ASPB and AAAS, received a Merit Award from the Botanical Society of America in 1981 for his significant contributions to our knowledge of the photosynthetic process, was a recipient of the Alex Laurie Award, and an Honor Member of the Russian Society of Plant Physiologists.

Clanton was preceded in death by his parents, Cora Eady and Clanton Candler Black, Sr. Survivors include his wife of 59 years, Betty; three children, Kay Adams, a children’s minister in the Methodist Church, Clanton Candler Black III, a general contractor, and Julia Bonner, a small animal veterinarian; and eight grandchildren.

Louise E. Anderson
University of Illinois at Chicago

Steven C. Huber
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign