C. J. ALEXOPOULOS: A SHORT HISTORY

On 17 March 1907 a baby was born in Chicago.  A descendant of the great boyar family, Sturdza, from the Byzantine fortress city of Pharnacia, Constantine John Alexopoulos grew up to attain a prominence in his own right (Table 1) and to continue a mycological tradition begun by Anton de Bary (Table 2).  Dr Alex was six years old when the first of the Balkan Wars was declared.  Although the Alexopoulos family had been living in the United States, Mr Alexopoulos was drafted into the Greek army and the family returned to Athens, where they remained through the Second Balkan War and World War I.  Dr Alex had begun secondary school at the Second Gymnasium of Piraeus when the family returned to Chicago in October of 1919.  He was twelve years old and spoke virtually no English.  A tutor, Mr McBride, was found to teach him English and simple mathematics; Mr McBride also got his student into high school without the required grade school certificate.  High school was hard work, with long nights of first translating English readings into Greek, then finally mastering the new language without translation, and catching and keeping up with his classmates in subject areas; he graduated from Lane Technical High School, Chicago, on time, in 1923.

From his early high-school days Dr Alex developed an interest in plants.  In September 1923 he began study at the University of Illinois in horticulture.  Although an egregious course in botany nearly swayed him to a major in chemistry, in this third year he studied plant pathology with Frederick Lincoln Stevens.  This course, together with the inspired laboratory instruction of the graduate assistant Wilhelm Solheim, captivated him and directed his interest toward a life-long career in botanical science.  He graduated third in his class in horticulture in 1927 with a minor in botany (Fig. 1A). With a $300-a-year assistantship Dr Alex remained at Illinois to take up research on the cytology of microsporogenesis of raspberry hybrids, for which he was awarded an M.Sc. Degree in horticulture in 1928.  He continued on at Illinois in a doctoral programme with a half-time assistantship, lucky to have any kind of income during the early part of the American depression.  Summers were spent hunting for peach trees infected with peach yellows for the Illinois State Department of Agriculture and the Illinois Natural History Survey (Fig. 1B, C).  As Dr Stevens’s research assistant he was able to obtain Glomerella cingulata ascomata with uv irradiation of Colletotrichum cultures.  His thesis, ‘A Comparative Study of Certain Pycnidial Fungi from Vitis’, dealt with cultural characteristics of fungi isolated from several varieties of grape and difficulties of delimiting species when only anamorphic states were present in culture.  If at age twelve Dr. Alex. had been far behind in English, the deficiency had disappeared completely by age twenty-five; his Ph.D. thesis shows the beginnings of the lucid writing style which helped to make his books and research papers famous.  Dr Stevens, his major professor, influenced him heavily, but he also profited form association with B. T. Palm, a visiting professor from Sweden, during the last two years of his programme. In 1932 with degree in hand, Dr Alex sent out about one hundred job-inquiry letters; he received not a single response.  The time was the worst of the depression and his family was not fairing well either.  His father had lost a great deal of money in Chicago real estate, and the small family company, a factory which made draperies for the Marshall Field Company, had little business.

With no job to go to Dr Alex remained at Illinois on a three-quarter-time appointment working with Dr Charles Hottes.  When in June of 1932 Dr Stevens had a heart attack, Dr Alex took over the mycology and general botany classes and continued temporarily in this position after Dr Steven’s death until Illinois could recruit a ‘big name’.  Jobs were not well advertised in those days, but Dr L. R. Tehon at the Illinois Natural History Survey consulted for a company in Kent, Ohio, and through him Dr Alex. heard of a job at Kent State University.  He was hired there in 1935.  Juliet Dowdy came to Kent State the next year as an instructor of music.  She was destined to become his friend, wife, and constant companion for the rest of his life. Dr Alex took a year’s leave to work as a plant pathologist for a large Greek fertilizer and insecticide company, the Institute of Chemistry and Agriculture ‘N. Canelopoulos’, in 1938.  His parents and sister Dora had returned to Greece earlier, so he rejoined them during this time.  With World War II brewing he left Greece and arrived in New York on 5 August 1939.  The arrival had been uncertain because the ships’ captain had been expected to be recalled form the high seas to war at any time.  Dr and Mrs Alex. were married 26 August 1939.

Once again his life was affected by war.  When the United States entered into World War II Dr Alex was in his early thirties and in little danger from the draft, but because of a strong sense of duty and devotion to is native country he volunteered for the medical corps.  He was accepted and told in October 1942 he would be called up soon; this was the last he heard from the medical corps.  In the meantime Dr Alex heard of the Rubber Development Corporation (RDC) from a former student and inquired about their need for help.  In March 1943 he was sent to Belém, Brazil.  His desire to help in the war effort was further frustrated because the RDC had no organization there.  During the first several weeks he spent much of his time going to the movies.  But here he also saw his first kapok tree and observed the processing of Hevea latex for the first time.  From Belèm he went to Manaus, a thousand miles up the Amazon River, where the RDC had taken over that city’s magnificent marble opera-house for headquarters.  Finally he went to Benjamin Constant on the Peruvian border, and was lucky to live with Italian priests in a house with screened windows.  He stayed in this malaria-ridden jungle for the next thirteen months, showing the local people the most efficient method of tapping rubber trees and getting the precious product to the nearest collection site for transport to North America.

In April 1944, home on leave from Brazil and expecting to return to Manaus with a promotion in the RDC, Dr Alex had an opportunity to go to Greece with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA) to help with agricultural recovery.  After a three-months’ course in Serbo-Croatian by the ‘army method’, he went to Cairo.  In late October he and his British counterpart were on the first relief ship to reach southern Greece.  For the next three years he worked in Greece with UNRRA.  Mrs Alex was able to join him later, and she also worked in the programme. Dr Alex was offered a job at Michigan State University for the fall of 1947.  From that time he resumed a more normal academic life marked by publication of Introductory Mycology in 1952 and a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship to Greece during the 1954-5 academic year.  At the time of Dr G. W. Matin’s retirement form the State University of Iowa, Dr F. K. Sparrow turned down the job and recommended his friend C. J. Alexopoulos.  After fulfilling a year-long commitment to Michigan State after his leave, Dr Alex. moved to Iowa City as professor and department head in 1956 (Fig. 1D).  Although he had begun to study slime moulds while he was still at Michigan State University, his interest grew and extended to cultural studies of a variety of species.  At Iowa Dr Alex had a happy mycological and personal association with Dr Martin and they began collaboration on The Myxomycetes (1969).  They remained close friends for the rest of Dr Martin’s life.  The second edition of Introductory Mycology (1962) appeared during the same years. With the prospect of a job without administrative duties Dr Alex. moved to the University of Texas at Austin in the fall of 1962.  Except for summers at the University of Virginia’s Mountain Lake Biological Station (1967 and 1969) and at The University of Washington, Seattle (1970), Dr Alex spent the rest of his career and, indeed, the rest of his life in Austin.  He often marvelled at the climate, thrilled at being able to walk out of doors in January without a top coat.  In Austin he continued his interest in slime moulds and collaborated with William D. Gray on the Biology of the Myxomycetes (1968).  His part on The Myxomycetes with Dr Martin was completed at Austin.  Dr Alex. and his friend Dr H. C. Bold wrote Algae and Fungi (1967) and Dr Alex joined Drs Bold and T. J. Delavoryas on the fourth edition of Morphology of Plants (1980).  The third edition of Introductory Mycology (1979) coauthored with his student Charles Mims, also appeared after his retirement.

While Dr Alex. had always been regarded as a superb teacher of upper-class and graduate students, he had little opportunity at Texas to teach younger students.  During the last ten years at Texas he decided to offer a course he had always wanted to teach - one designed for lower level, non-science student on economic plants.  The course was tough, but popular.  His straight-forward teaching style, characterized by superb organization and dry humour, served him well, not only for graduate students but also for freshmen who responded appreciatively to his style even in the late 1970s. Many of this productive years at Texas were marked by severe physical handicap.  A benign brain tumour misdiagnosed in 1964 as myasthenia gravis caused him to have years of double vision and slightly slurred speech before worse symptoms developed.  Similar problems recurred on several occasions throughout the rest of his life.  His logical, immediate solution was to cover one eye with a hand and read away relentlessly.

Dr Alex had non-mycological interests as well as mycological ones.  He love Mozart, but complained occasionally of too much modern music in a symphony programme.  His own artistic sense was expressed in his photography.  He and Mrs Alex travelled widely to photogenic sites, but his composition and artistry enhanced every scene.  Of his large collection of Kodachromes the favourites of many viewers were of the Greek Iles.  He was also fond of cats, and visitors to the Alex.’s political views were essentially conservative, but he considered every issue separately.  He was vitally aware of injustices in the world and believed that political awareness and participation were a means of correction them.

Dr Alex had a politely formal manner with people he did not know well; to those with whom he was closely associated he was a warm and affectionate friend.  His presence and prominence would have made it easy for him to proselytize and acquire larger numbers of students than he had.  But he believed a student should choose an area of study because of an intrinsic interest, not because of the short-lived influence of a single individual.  For this reason most of his students were given a great deal of freedom in the research programmes.  He encouraged them to be as broad as possible and insisted upon their learning and using new techniques in research.  He had a warm relationship with his students, often walking through the lab asking what was new, leaving specimens on a microscope with a note requesting an identification signed with his distinctive script monogram.  In the early days of styrofoam several students are said to have spent some time studying weathered examples of the unfamiliar material.

Upon his mandatory retirement from teaching at age seventy in 1977, his student and friends met at Tampa, Florida, during the Second International Mycological Congress and established the Alexopoulos Prize to be administered by the Mycological Society of America.  This prize was designated for recognition of research accomplishments of a younger member of the Society with the intention that this form of professional encouragement continue the personal encouragement Dr Alex gave so effectively during his lifetime.

During Dr Alex’s last year of life, Mrs Alex. provided devoted and constant care in their home.  He died there the afternoon of 15 May 1986.  Mrs Alex (Juliet Dowdy Alexopoulos), Austin, and his only sister, Dora Panos, Athens, Greece, survived him.

Much of the information presented in this biography is from one of a series of lectures given by Dr Alexopoulos to his students on American mycologists (1971).  Additional information was taken from his curriculum vitae 1977) and the sources listed below.  Andrè Codrescu, Department of English, Louisiana State University, kindly provided information on the Sturdza family.  Drs Henry Aldrich, George Carroll, and Charles Mims made many comments which improved the original version of the manuscript.