Person

Professor Schelpe

1924 - 1985

Edmund Andre Charles Louis Eloi Schelpe was born in Durban on the 27 July 1924. He spent his boyhood there, and graduated from the University of Natal with a degree (with distinction) in Botany in 1943. He was later awarded an M.Sc for a thesis on the ecology of the Natal Drakensburg. He then went to Oxford where he was awarded a D.Phil for a thesis on the ecology of bryophytes. In 1953 he was appointed lecturer in Botany at the University of Cape Town. In 1956 he became a senior lecturer in Plant Taxonomy and curator of the Bolus Herbarium. He was awarded the Nuffield Dominion travelling fellowship in Natural Sciences in 1960 and appointed associate professor in 1968. He became Professor of Botany (Ad Hominem), and Director of the Bolus Herbarium in 1973. Professor Schelpe maintained a reputation for honesty, integrity and a boundless enthusiasm for his botanical studies and for the Bolus Herbarium. He was an expert on Cape Flora and a world authority on orchids and ferns. His joie de vivre and botanical enthusiasm led him to organise expeditions to Mount Kenya in 1949 and to the Western Himalayas in 1952. He died in 1985.

BC971