I'm joined here with Dr.

Lucia Lohmann, President and Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, to talk about the late Dr.

Peter Raven.

And you knew Peter Raven very personally, he was a mentor to you over the years.

Talk a little bit about your relationship with him.

So I first met Peter in 1996.

I came to St.

Louis for graduate school, and Dr.

Raven was part of my Ph.D.

thesis committee.

Every time I would meet him, it would be a one hour meeting, and I'd have work for the next six months.

And I feel like at the same time, Peter was a true connector.

So he was a brilliant scientist.

And for me, even in Brazil, as a 17-year-old starting my degree in biology, I used his textbook.

We all read about his research papers.

He was the first person to produce a synthesis on origin of flowering plants.

So essentially saying, how did flowering plants get to have the distribution they have nowadays, which was really ahead of its time?

His spirit of collaboration and generosity.

And at the same time, one thing he would always emphasize was the need to communicate the science.

And he would always say, OK, don't just do your science.

Make sure you communicate it to the world.

Dr.

Raven would always say that.

And I completely agree with him that a lot of the innovation and creativity really comes to life when you have people from different fields.

So when even when we were in the field with artists and photographers, they would ask questions about our work that we never thought about before.

And that would lead to novel insights and different ideas on how to do things.

So really bringing people together from different generations, different expertise, I think that's crucial to innovation and is something he always emphasized.

Absolutely.

And I imagine that's probably why his career was so successful in the world of academia and with the garden itself being president at 35 and, you know, a long standing, impactful career here in St.

Louis.

No pressure, but it's pretty big shoes to fill.

Yeah, it really is.

I think nobody can fill those shoes because, you know, Peter's so remarkable.

Peter really pushed me to work at a global scale.

How can we grow the garden that is so rooted in St.

Louis, having all of these local actions, but the global impact?

But also, what is our role in the world and how can we contribute to something bigger than the garden itself?

Absolutely, and again, another big philosophy of his was how humanity interacts with the natural world around us.

One thing we are really working on now is telling those stories in new ways, right?

In such a busy world, people come and you immediately have a sense of calm.

And at the same time, we have all this science behind the scenes.

So nearly 100 scientists and PhD botanists who are doing all this science that really structure everything that people see around the garden.

Yeah.

And the things that you see around the garden, whether you know it or not, were probably at some point influenced by Dr.

Peter Raven.

And how do you hope to continue that legacy?

Anybody who comes here will always feel Peter's spirit and legacy.

- What Dr.

Raven was always very concerned about was how could people see them more connected to nature and not as a separate entity?

And I think that's a very important role that we carry too.

And if we think about the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the medicines we take, the oxygen we breathe, so we really cannot live without plants.

And that is crucial to protecting it.

We just, we only protect what we understand.

We only care about what we understand.

And we can play, well, we already play, and can play an even growing role in that respect.