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Mycologia, 95(5), 2003, pp. 982-983.
© 2003 by The Mycological Society of America

Memorial

Lekh Raj Batra, 1929–1999


Robert W. Lichtwardt 1

     Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045-2106

William C. Denison

     Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331

Lekh R. Batra—mycologist, educator and linguist—died at the age of 69 after a distinguished professional career and a wide range of life experiences. Lekh was born in a remote village in the Thar Desert near the Indus River in western Punjab, British India; he attended high school in Lahore. His family became penniless refugees after surviving the carnage of partition in 1947. They moved to Punjab, where Lekh earned bachelor of science and master of science degrees with honors as a President of India scholar. He was the first of his family to attend high school and college. After lecturing a year at Deshbandu College in Delhi, he moved to the United States and in 1958 earned a doctorate in botany under Richard P. Korf at Cornell University. He met his future wife, Suzanne W. Tubby, at Swarthmore College, where he was teaching. Lekh moved to the University of Kansas, where Suzanne was earning her doctorate in entomology. At the University of Kansas he was a research associate, then an assistant and associate professor, working primarily with symbiotic relationships of ambrosia fungi and beetles, and fungi that grow within insect plant galls. During that time, a daughter, Mira (Mirabai K.), and, later, a son, Persa (Persaram O.) were born. He became a U.S. citizen in 1963.



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  		FIG. 1. Lekh R. Batra (Photo by Elizabeth Moore).

 
Lekh joined the Beltsville, Maryland, Agricultural Research Center in 1967 (with his wife taking a position as an entomologist), eventually becoming a senior scientist and a research leader (microbiologist), and, in 1986, a science advisor to the Beltsville area director. His prolific career included authorship of more than 130 scientific articles, technical papers and reviews, which included four book-length monographs—one on world species of Monilinia. He also edited four books and two volumes of a professional journal. Beyond insect-fungus symbioses and studies on the biosystematics of hemiascomycetes and discomycetes, Lekh's mycological interests included Asian fermented foods and beverages and toxic molds. One of his more recent discoveries published with Suzanne in Science involved the mummy-berry disease of blueberries and huckleberries, wherein shoots infected with ascospores of Monilinia spp. result in leaves becoming ultraviolet-reflective and fragrant. The leaves secrete sugars from their lesions, attracting pollinating insects, which then transfer conidia to the flowers, which results in sclerotia formation. One of the first of several collaborative publications by Suzanne and Lekh appeared in Scientific American in 1967, a beautifully illustrated article on the various insects that cultivate fungi.

Both Lekh and Suzanne were active for years in civic affairs in the city where they lived, Greenbelt, Maryland, said to be the first planned community in the nation. Lekh's excellent sense of humor expressed itself in many ways. It was reported in The Washington Post that Lekh entered a Greenbelt Labor Day parade dressed in jeans, plaid shirt and straw hat, accompanied by a huge sow and 13 piglets that he borrowed from the research center. After retirement in 1994, in Greenbelt, Lekh became coordinator of a UNESCO project called the International Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems, a compilation of information on food and agriculture to assist developing nations.

Lekh had a remarkable ability with languages. In addition to a mastery of English, he was fluent, of course, in his native languages—Urdu and Hindi—as well as several other Indian languages. He took examinations in French and German for his doctorate and also knew some Arabic, Russian and Japanese. It is said that when Khruschev gave his memorable, shoe-banging address at the United Nations, Lekh sat in front of a television set and translated Khruschev's Russian for both English and Arabic speakers present. In 1995, he published Names of Japanese Plants in Romanized Katakana and Scientific Nomenclature.

Mycology lost a valued colleague in 1999 and a unique person who lived life to its fullest.

FOOTNOTES

1 licht{at}ku.edu Back

Accepted for publication November 18, 2002.

LITERATURE CITED

Batra LR., 1966 Ambrosia fungi: extent of specificity in ambrosia beetles. Science 153:193-195[Abstract/Free Full Text]

Batra SWT, Batra LR., 1967 The fungus gardens of insects. Sci Amer 217:112-20

Batra LR., 1967 Ambrosia fungi: a taxonomic revision and nutritional studies of some species. Mycologia 59:976-1017

Batra LR., Batra SWT, Bohart GE., 1973 The mycoflora of domesticated and wild bees (Apoidea). Mycol Appl 49:13-44

Batra LR., 1973 Nematosporaceae (Hemiascomycetidae): taxonomy, pathogenicity, distribution and vector relations. USDA Tech Bull 1469:1-77

Batra LR., Millner PD., 1976 Asian fermented foods and beverages. In: Unterkifler LA, ed. Developments in industrial mycology. Washington, DC. Soc Indust Microbiol 17:117-128

Batra LR., ed 1979 Insect-fungus symbiosis: nutrition, mutualism and commensalisms. Montclair, New Jersey: Allanheld, Osmun & Co. 276 p

Batra LR., Batra SWT., 1985 Floral mimicry induced by mummy-berry fungus exploits host's pollinators as vectors. Science 228:1011-1013[Abstract/Free Full Text]

Batra LR., Klassen W, eds 1987 Public perceptions of biotechnology. Bethesda, Maryland: Agr Res Inst. 271 p

Batra LR., 1991 World species of Monilinia (Fungi): their ecology, biosystematics and control. Mycologia Mem 16. 246 p





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