Prof Johannes van Staden

Johannes van Staden was born in Oudtshoorn in the Little Karoo in 1939, and grew up in various parts of South Africa. He received a BSc and MSc in Botany from University of Stellenbosch, where he also lectured. He then relocated to University of Natal, where he received a PhD in Botany in 1970. He worked his way up the academic ladder and was promoted to Professor of Botany and appointed Head of Department in 1987. In 1999 he became Director of his own postgraduate research centre (Research Centre for Plant Growth and Development). Prof van Staden has been a Research Fellow at University College of Wales, University of California, Davis, National Australian University, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Broom’s Barn Experimental Station in the UK, and University of West-Hungary (where he was awarded an Honorary DSc.). In his career he has worked in many areas of the Plant Sciences/Botany, but specifically in the fields of plant hormones, seed germination, senescence, stress physiology, post-harvest physiology, biotechnology and plant tissue culture, ethnobotany, secondary products and ethnomedicine. Prof van Staden has supervised 82 MSc and 96 PhD students and 66 Post-Docs, many of whom are now working in research labs all over the world. He is the author/co-author of 1226 papers which have been published in ISI rated journals. In 2002 he fell within the top 0.5% of Internationally most cited authors. He has a number of publications that qualify as ‘citation classics’ (over 100 citations). Prof van Staden is the Editor-in-Chief of the South African Journal of Botany; Associate Editor of the Journal of Ethnopharmacology, Acta Physiologia Plantarum and Plant Cell, Tissue and Organ Culture; and is on the editorial board of a number of other journals.