Photography by Matt Marcinkowski
The new wing of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in Creve Coeur is named for Dr. William Danforth, the founding chairman of the biotechnology research center’s board of trustees. The $45 million, 79,000-square-foot addition to the research complex will provide lab space for an additional 100 plant scientists. Danforth, chancellor emeritus of Washington University, turned 90 in mid-April.
How will this new addition help?
We started about 15 years ago. The basic ideas were to develop more efficient ways of feeding people with more nutritious food, to preserve the environment, and to make St. Louis a world center for plant science. We have great biosciences here: biomedical science, the Missouri Botanical Garden, two agricultural colleges—one in Columbia and one in Champaign–Urbana—Monsanto… We all got together and talked about how we could do that. All these institutions would strengthen their plant sciences, and we would create a new institution devoted to fundamental plant science. We wanted to develop not only the science, but also the commercial side to produce jobs. We thought if all went well, in 50 years, people would say, “Well, those old guys helped save the world. They helped build St. Louis.”
How has the research changed over time?
You discover the easy things first; then it gets more complicated. Research in all the life-science fields in medicine goes faster than agriculture. That doesn’t necessarily mean that medicine is more important. Medicine is very important, but we have to eat. We have to eat in a way that is sustainable; we can’t just eat this year and throw away the land. You’ve got to have the land ready for the next year and on and on—for the next 100 years. I think this is a big step for us. This is the first time we’ve added space for more scientists, and we plan to add more scientists over time.
How else has research changed, on a day-to-day basis, since you pursued it years ago?
Back when I did science, it was different. Science was one person at a time. You went into a laboratory in the morning and sometimes worked late into the evening, pretty much by yourself. I might talk to other people, pick up new techniques from them, but now research is a team sport. You have people with different skills working together. Here in plant science, you have people who really know plants. But you also need people who are good at computation; you need computers that can handle data that comes out of the experiments. You need automation. You need the space and equipment.
Why plant sciences?
Plant science fits St. Louis. We have Monsanto and two agricultural colleges. We’re in the center of the grain belt, with the American soybean and corn growers’ associations here. If you do some kind of life sciences, you’re immediately in competition with the coasts. That doesn’t mean you can’t win, but the competition in plant sciences is not as great as life sciences—and in the long run, it helps humankind.
It used to be that much of the concern was about famine. Now, the problems seem to be about malnutrition and population growth. Why?
Since we are human beings, we never solve anything once and for all. The reason for the tremendous gains in the world population was the green revolution. It was headed by Norman Borlaug, who originally was sent to Mexico to find out why the wheat didn’t do better there. They got the wheat to be resistant to fungal infections. They did it by breeding and using lots and lots of the good science of that day. That started in the 1940s and reached its peak in the late ’60s and early ’70s. There was so much new food produced that in the United States, we asked farmers not to grow as much food because the storage costs were too high. We didn’t know what to do with all these surpluses. What happened was the population of the world began to grow more food, and pretty soon the population of the world more than doubled. The other thing about the green revolution was it used too much water. Now our rivers are running dry, and our aquifers are running dry. We were using too much fertilizer and running out of what we use to make fertilizer from. Pesticides were a concern; they were very harmful to bees. So there is no end to the problems.
Do people rely too much on science and technology to solve the world’s problems?
The questions we are facing, with the number of people in the world, won’t be solved by science alone, but they won’t be solved without it. We need the science, but then we need the help from the business people, political leaders, the general public—everybody. This is a world problem, and we need world-supplied solutions with a lot of people involved. It’s very hard. Humans have never done anything like this. It is kind of scary, but we have to figure out how to do it.
Will this benefit more than highly educated workers?
We have a branch of the community college operating here. They train people for doing laboratory science; it’s not necessarily the most difficult kind of science, but you have to have all those people. This is not just a place for scientists; we need people to take care of the plants. We need accountants. We want to produce food; that means you have to have farmers. That’s not to shortchange education, because we need more educated people all the time.
You were involved in the St. Louis school desegregation settlement. What do you think remains to be done?
I am not a professional educator. I decided when I first got into K–12 education that it’s a different kind of thing from being a chancellor at a university. You have to deal with different kinds of people, different kinds of problems. You need specialists in that, just as you do in college education.
How important is it for a metro area to have a good public education system?
It’s tremendously important. I think we are lucky to have a very fine superintendent in Kelvin Adams, and the board is fully supporting him. That’s a blessing.
You were chancellor at Washington University for 24 years. Did you think you’d be there that long?
I’m very positive about St. Louis. That’s why I became chancellor. St. Louis just had to have a fine university. It was going through the radical period, so I figured I’d do it for a few years and then maybe I’d go back to science. Then I got fascinated by it. I loved working with young people. I loved working with faculty. I could always learn something new from people. It’s a great job if you like that sort of thing.
What’s the trick to raising funds?
First, you have to have a good cause, something that resonates with people. You have to have a good institution. Our work here hinges on hunger. Hunger problems are not going to be solved without experts in science. That means you need to build an institution that does it. We have a lot of federal and foundation funds, particularly from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. But they don’t come to us because we’re nice people; they come to us because we have really good science. That’s why we are here: It’s not just to solve hunger; it’s to build an institution that keeps advancing the cause.
You’ve said you want to help save the world. Do you think the center is helping do that?
I’ve always wanted to work on something that would do good for people, for the world. I think this is one of those things that will. You never know if you are going to succeed. We have wonderful people here, wonderful, creative scientists. They work together on not only advancing the science, but also making things that are suitable for development and making it into a business. That’s the system we have in the United States, the free enterprise system. It’s been fabulous at producing goods, wealth, good health, and all those things we prize. But it needs work. You can never turn your back on anything.
How have you stayed healthy to age 90?
It’s good genes and luck. There is a lot of luck to it. Even if you take identical twins, with the same genes, the same DNA sequences, they don’t tend to die at the same time. They’re born at the same time, but they don’t die at the same time. I don’t know. I have interests, and I stay involved. It’s like eating popcorn—I can’t stop.
