Paul Alan Cox

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Dr. Paul Alan Cox is a botanist whose scientific research focuses on the ecology of island plants and the ethnobotany of island peoples. Receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard University, he served for many years as professor and dean at Brigham Young University and later became King Carl XVI Gustaf Professor of Environmental Science at the Swedish Agricultural University and the University of Uppsala. For seven years he was Director of the Congressionally-Chartered National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG) in Hawaii and Florida, and is currently Executive Director of the Institute for Ethnomedicine, which is affiliated with the NTBG. He is the author of over 150 scientific papers and reviews, and was chosen by TIME Magazine as one of eleven “Heroes of Medicine” for his search for new medicines from plants. In 1997 he received the Goldman Environmental Prize for the conservation efforts described in his book Nafanua: Saving the Samoan Rainforest ( New York: W.H. Freeman), which has been translated into German, Japanese and Samoan. He speaks a variety of island languages and is internationally renowned for his advocacy of indigenous peoples.

Dr. Cox founded and is chairman of the environmental non-profit organization, Seacology, located in Berkeley, California.