Donald Kaplan studied
fundamental structural and developmental commonalities that underpin
plant form across different groups of plants: algae, bryophytes,
ferns, gymnosperms and angiosperms.
He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Northwestern
University in 1960, majoring in biology. He earned a Ph.D. in botany
at UC Berkeley in 1965 and spent the following year as a
postdoctoral scholar at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England.
Kaplan then joined UC Irvine as one of the founding faculty members
of organismal biology. In 1968, he returned to UC Berkeley where he
spent the rest of his academic career.
Kaplan's many honors included the Alexander van Humboldt Senior Scientist
Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, Fellow of the California Academy of
Sciences, the Botanical Society Merit Award and Sigma Xi National
Lecturer. A legendary teacher, he received the UC Berkeley
Distinguished Teaching Award and the Botanical Society's Charles
Bessey Botanical Teaching Award. The Botanical Society of America
sponsors an annual lecture in his honor at their meetings.
For more about Kaplan, read
a UC Berkeley Press release,
an Academic Senate Memoir, or
Donald Kaplan's Legacy.