BOTANICAL MUSEUM LEAFLETS 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
ALBERT FREDERICK HILL (1889-1977) 
AND ECONOMIC BOTANY 
RICHARD EVANS SCHULTES 
Dr. Albert F. Hill died at his home in Surry, Maine, on March 
20, 1977. His long and intimate association with the Botanical 
Museum of Harvard University contributed substantially to the 
pre-eminence that this institution enjoys in the field of Economic 
Botany. The following notes, based on my personal discussion 
with Dr. Hill in 1967, and read at a meeting of the Society for 
Economic Botany, are offered as a tribute to and an appreciation 
of his outstanding contributions to this interdisciplinary field of 
botany and to the Museum. 
There is probably no name better known in contemporary 
economic botany than that of Albert F. Hill. Yet, beyond a few 
colleagues and students at Harvard University, he is not person- 
ally known to many. A most modest scientist, he almost never 
attended meetings and congresses. Ted, as he was known to all 
of his friends, said to me when he was asked to address the 
annual meeting of the Society for Economic Botany, of which he 
had been president in 1966-1967: *‘While I am supposed to be an 
authority in economic botany, except perhaps for nomencla- 
ture, my contributions are virtually non-existent. Because, in 
our ‘new society’, it is thought improper to reminisce, I cannot 
prepare a respectable presidential address for the honour that 
the Society for Economic Botany has just given me. I regret that 
I cannot attend your meeting, but I would rather do nothing 
about an address than to make remarks for the sake of making 
remarks and knowing that I had contributed nothing. I do, 
nonetheless, deeply appreciate the honour and thank you for 
thinking of me in this way’’. 
Ted’s assertion that his ‘‘contributions are virtually non- 
existent’’ constitutes a major understatement. His contributions 
are, to be sure, often more or less recondite and perhaps not 
