Rick, 78, who has won many awards, says that the von Humboldt holds special significance for him: Over the course of the 14 expeditions he's taken through South America in search of wild tomato varieties, he says, he has retraced the route taken by von Humboldt--the German naturalist and geographer after whom the award is named--and French botanist AimBonpland from 1799 to 1804. In addition, Rick notes, one of the wild species of tomatoes he's studied in South America, Lycopersicon hirsutum H and B (for Humboldt and Bonpland), was first collected and named by the pair.
The species is one of thousands he's collected in more than 50 years of expeditions and study of tomato genetics, research that has enabled him over the years to map the location of several of the genes on the tomato's 12 chromosomes. Rick's genetic characterization of the tomato is credited by many with making ...
