John Rowley (1926–2010), palynologist extraordinaire

John Rowley (1926–2010), palynologist extraordinaire

John Raymond Rowley (born 23 May 1926, passed away 25 September 2010) was a remarkable palynologist, who contributed to almost every branch of the discipline from palaeopalynology to developmental biology. He also demonstrated a remarkable versatility in the range of techniques he had at his command.

John was born in San Jose, California, and after serving as a Sergeant in the US Air Force from 1944 to 1946, he studied for a Bachelor of Arts in Bacteriology at the University of California Los Angeles, graduating there in 1950. He returned to the US Air Force in 1950–1951 and then enrolled at the University of Oregon, graduating with a Master of Arts in Botany/Biology in 1953. John went on to obtain his PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1957. In 1958–1959, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Zürich, Switzerland (ETH, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich), where he worked with Professor Albert Frey-Wyssling and Professor Kurt Mühlethaler, two of the great pioneers of plant ultrastructure. In 1959, he was appointed Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts, a position he held until 1969. During that time he began to work closely with the late Professor Gunnar Erdtman, founder of the Palynological Laboratory at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm, and of the journal Grana Palynologica (now GRANA).

Evidence of their close friendship exists in the form of a note from Erdtman to John thanking him for their happy days together in 1966–1967. It features one of Erdtman's cartoons, depicting him floating on a giant Betula pollen grain, playing his flute, while the sun sets in the background. In 1969, John succeeded Erdtman as head of the Gunnar Erdtman Palynological Laboratory, a post he held until 1975, two years after Erdtman's death. He made it a place of innovation and great creativity. In 1976, John became a Docent at the Botanical Institute of Stockholm University, where he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in 1978.

It can be said, without risk of contradiction, that John Rowley pursued a unique and distinctive path in palynological research. He regarded pollen grains and spores as dynamic living entities and wanted to understand their biology, including aspects such as growth in size within the sporangium or anther, the permeability of the sporoderm to different substances and how it was assembled during the course of development. John had an encyclopaedic knowledge of buffers, fixatives and staining reagents for every method of investigation and he was, in this sense, a virtuoso microscopist. In parallel with his interest in how the sporoderm was assembled, he took an active interest in how it might be disassembled. This led him to follow up on experiments on the corrosion and decay of pollen grains in soils and leaf litter, initiated by Albert J. Havinga in the 1960s. He developed an array of solvents to remove the embedding medium from specimen blocks prepared for transmission electron microscopy and to partially dissolve the exine itself. His interest in doing so was to expose the molecular substructure of the sporoderm, an objective he pursued with a variety of physical techniques. These included ion beam etching, in which he found a close collaborator and kindred spirit in the late Don Claugher, head of the Electron Microscope Unit at the Natural History Museum, London.

At all times, John was fascinated with the idea of finding a universal substructure within the exine. Over many years, he developed and refined a series of conceptual models for helically coiled subunits, or tufts. This became a complex, and for many people, a challenging avenue of research, but as our knowledge of the processes of self-assembly in colloidal systems has grown, so the nature of the substructures that captivated John has become apparent.

As everyone who worked with John will recall, to collaborate with him was a source of great pleasure. He had two great passions: palynology and his family. He married Joanne Marie Schlenk, his inseparable companion in life, in 1955, and together, they raised their four children Eric, Elizabeth, Peter and Daniel in Sweden, which they made their home. John visited John J. Skvarla annually in Oklahoma for over 20 years, during which time John expressed no interest in sightseeing or sampling local restaurants. The spotlight was firmly on palynology, but let it not be imagined that John was one of those overly intense scientists, who are tiring to be with. It was a joy to spend time with John, his infectious way of laughing would bring in tears into his eyes so that if one did not know better, one would think he was crying. John could find humour in everything. Stephen Blackmore recalls being shown, on his first visit to see John in Stockholm, what he called his ‘Flying Cow Micrograph’, a transmission electron microscopy image of Artemisia exine, in which a particularly informative region could be located by a fragment that resembled, apparently, a flying cow. On another occasion, visiting their home in Lidingö, close to Stockholm, Stephen was informed by John that they would be meeting Joanne at the ‘Mandarin Duck’ (which appeared to be the name of a restaurant). Arriving at a small lake, they walked along the shore until they found a solitary Mandarin Duck (Aix galericulata), where they waited for a few minutes until another figure approached, walked up and down the shore scanning the lake for birds, and spotting the Mandarin Duck, joined them. It was Joanne. At the time, this was just another example of the fun the pair had together, but it is possible to find a deeper meaning. There is a Chinese metaphor, ‘yuān yāng xì shuǐ’ (literally: two mandarin ducks playing in water), used to describe life-time loving couples. Meeting them at any point in their 55 years together one could be forgiven for thinking that John and Joanne were newlyweds.

John's humour allowed him to pass off incidents that others might not have handled so gracefully. Receiving the prestigious ‘Gunnar Erdtman International Award for Palynology’ from the Indian Palynological Society at the International Palynological Congress in Calgary in 1984, the medal fell from its container and cart-wheeled across the stage. John retrieved it and delivered his lecture with aplomb.

Despite his mastery of the complexities of electron microscopy, John did not care for computers, he never took to email, needing assistance to send a message and always printing them rather than reading them on screen. He was, however, fond of sending postcards and hand written notes, together with his prestigious output of reprints. Similarly, he preferred the darkroom to computerised image editing and every surface in his laboratory was covered with micrographs carefully sorted according to subject. John loved nature and liked to walk, often bringing a small bunch of flowers, gathered along the way, into the laboratory.

It was never in his nature to dislike anyone, he always had encouraging words for everyone, particularly aspiring palynologists from developing countries. Above all, he found pleasure in sharing. With his passing, palynology lost not just one of its most accomplished practitioners, but a dear friend.

Stephen Blackmore and John J. Skvarla

(List of publications compiled by Michael Hesse, Joanne Rowley, John Skvarla and Thomas Denk)