Supplement to Mycologia Vol. 53(3) June 2002 Newsletter of the Mycological Society of America -- In This Issue -- An Interview With Dr. William Dudley Gray April 3, 1987 -- Lancaster, Ohio Interview: William Dudley Gray .............. 1-5 Flora W. Patterson USDA Mycologist ..... 5-9 by Karl Leo Braun From the Editor ............................................ Questions or comments should be sent to Karl L. Braun at 5460 Ballentine MSA Business ..................................... 10-18 Pike, Springfield, OH 45502 or email: < [email protected] >. From the President ........................... 10-11 FIRST MET DR. GRAY while working in a mycology lab at Wright Field Email Express ........................................ 11 in Dayton, Ohio. I was in my middle twenties and he was a visiting Minutes Midyear Exec. Council....... 12-16 Iprofessor from The Ohio State University who had come to Wright Midyear Committee Reports ........... 17-18 Field to teach a course in Industrial Mycology. I took the course – a 2002 Foray ............................................ 18 wise decision because what I learned there helped shape the rest of my Mycologia On-line .............................. 18 life. It was in that course I learned what a Myxomycete was. He encour- Abstracts 2002 (Corvalis, OR) ............ 19-60 aged me to return to Ohio State and work under him as a lab assistant. I Forms did so and went on to receive a Master of Science degree and my thesis was on the Myxomycetes of Ohio. What I learned there became Change of Address ............................. 68 invaluable to me as a high school biology teacher. He was a great Endowment & Contributions ............. 69 teacher and a wonderful friend until his death in 1990. Gift Membership ............................... 71 Society Membership .......................... 72 Mycological News ............................... 61-63 Mycologist’s Bookshelf ...................... 63-67 Review — Hoog’s“Atlas of Clinical Fungi, 2nd ed.” Mycological Classifieds ............................ 67 Positions, Goods/Services, Fungi, Publications, Workshops Calendar of Events .................................... 68 Sustaining Members ............................ 70-71 ~ Important Dates ~ June 15: Deadline: Inoculum 53(4) June 22-26: MSA 2002, Corvallis OR August 11-17: IMC VII, Oslo, Norway July 27-31: MSA 2003, Asilomar CA Editor — Donald G. Ruch Dr.William Dudley Gray, 1987. (Photo by Karl Braun) Department of Biology THE INTERVIEW Ball State University Muncie, IN 47306-0440 USA KLB: I’d like to know when and where you were born and a little bit about your parents. 765.285.8829 FAX 765.285.8804 [email protected] WDG: I was born in Clarksville, Indiana, September 21, 1912, about a half mile from where George Rogers Clark spent a good many of his last MSA Homepage: days. My father was an accountant and my mother was a stenogra- http://msafungi.org pher. Of course, I never knew my mother very well. She died when I was about 6 years old, during the flu epidemic in WWI. KLB: When you were growing up, did anything particularly interesting happen that made an impression on you? WDG: King Tut’s tomb was discovered KLB: So you went straight from a B.A. collected it named it -- and the man when I was 10 years old, and I have to a PhD -- and that was around who collected it was Lucian M. had a life long interest in Egyptology. 1938, right? Underwood. Here I was, just a kid, KLB: You went through a traditional WDG: Yes. and Lucian Underwood wrote books - elementary, junior high, and high - so I thought I had to be wrong and I KLB: What was your thesis when you checked up -- and guess what -- school, but in high school did you did your doctorate? have any idea of eventually going Lucian Underwood was wrong. He into biology? WDG: The effect of light on the fruiting called it Trichia (something or other) of Myxomycetes. and actually it was Hemitrichia -- I’ve WDG: Oh no, I was going to become an KLB: When you started at DePauw forgotted the species name. And I engineer and go to Purdue Univer- thought, now if a man like Lucian sity, but I went to DePauw University then, you were interested in becoming a biologist. Underwood could make a mistake like and became a mycologist instead. that, it’s about time someone took a WDG: No, I wanted to become a That was because I got a scholarship hand with the Myxomycetes (laugh- physicist. to DePauw. ing). So that’s how I got started. I KLB: When you were in high school, KLB: When, at DePauw, did things turn think one of my first papers had to do were there any teachers in particular around and you decided to go into with the Myxomycetes of Clark who encouraged you to go to biology? County, Indiana. DePauw? WDG: At the beginning of my sopho- KLB: After you got your Ph.D. at WDG: Well, I had never heard of more year I took botany -- I learned Pennsylvania in 1938, was it then that DePauw, and about a month before I about the fungi, and that became my you went to Swarthmore College? primary interest. graduated my principal called me in WDG: No. It was during my last year at and said he had taken the liberty of KLB: Was there anyone in particular Penn that I taught part time at getting me a rector scholarship at who introduced you to the fungi? Swarthmore. DePauw because of my good grades. WDG: Yes -- Winona Welch. I said great, and then dropped the KLB: ...and then to Miami University? idea of going to Purdue, because you KLB: Is that the Winona Welch you WDG: Well no, a year after I got my had to pay tuition at Purdue, and at were talking about earlier when I said degree I received a National Research DePauw I wouldn’t have to pay any. I couldn’t get myself to call you Bill Council Fellowship and I had a big So that is the way it happened, but as instead of Dr. Gray? decision to make. I could go to Iowa far as anyone encouraging me -- let WDG: Oh, I couldn’t call her Winona for and work with Martin, or I could go to me think. I knew my Latin teacher had anything. When I wrote to her a Wisconsin and work with Duggar. I gone there and when I got to DePauw, a while back to tell her about my went to Duggar and I’ve never Latin scholar there told me that my Latin troubles in ’86, I got a letter back regretted it. He was a great little old teacher was one of his best students in from her written on both sides, hand man. He and a student by the name of all the years he had been teaching, so I written -- she was 90 -- she was a Miss Fergusen found out how to guess maybe -- I don’t recall her tremendous person. cultivate mushrooms without the use encouraging me to go though. KLB: In your sophomore year then you of spores. That really set up the KLB: That was around 1933, and you had decided you weren’t going to mushroom industry. That was his first later graduated from DePauw -- what become a physicist; you wanted to accomplishment. Duggar wrote the was the degree? become a biologist. first textbook on plant pathology in America, and the first textbook on WDG: It was a B.A. in Botany -- that was WDG: That’s right -- and I never took plant physiology in America. He was the only way you could get mycol- physics in college. a member of the National Research ogy in those days. KLB: So that’s how you got started in Council working on radiation. That’s KLB: So when you finished your four biology, but how about the Myxo- one reason why I went to Wisconsin - years at DePauw, you were already mycetes specifically? - I was interested in the effect of well into your study of mycology. WDG: Well, one day in Dr. Welch’s different wave lengths of light on the WDG: Yes, and I went back then for a class, she gave each of us an fruiting of Myxomycetes. Two years fifth year. herbarium specimen with the name after he was forced to retire, he discovered aureomycin. That’s just KLB: For the Master’s degree, or just ... covered up. They were in small boxes and we were to identify them. the kind of man Duggar was. He was WDG: Well, I was going to go for a Mine was a Myxomycete and I a tremendous person. Of course, a lot Master’s, but then the assistantship identified it. She wasn’t around, so of people have helped me during my at the University of Pennsylvania after I identified it I sneaked a look at life. I can’t say Duggar helped me the showed up -- so I took it and never the name, and the species was most, but he sure helped me a lot. I got a Master’s degree. different from what the man who had remember the last time I saw old Ben 2 Duggar. I was elected president of morgani. I said, “Well, you can eat the Biology Club at Ohio State and I anything you can chew and swallow, made up my mind that one thing I but if I were doing it I wouldn’t eat was going to do was to get Benjamin these mushrooms because about Duggar to talk to the club. He was 50% of the people who do get sick.” working at a drug company at the This fellow grabbed up his paper bag time (the one where he discovered and said, “I’ve been eating these all aureomycin) -- so I wrote to him and my life -- you damned college he agreed to come.