Photo-PeltonA gift from Frederick Kavanagh endowed an award to honor the memory of Jeanette Siron Pelton, an inspiring teacher whose special field had been plant morphogenesis. The Pelton Award, which carries a stipend of $1,000, is made from time to time to recognize sustained and imaginative contributions in the field of experimental plant morphology, broadly defined to include subcellular, cellular and organismal levels of complexity.  Candidates are selected by a committee appointed by the Botanical Society of America and submitted to the Foundation for final approval.

The first recipient in 1969 was Ralph H. Wetmore of Harvard University; the second, in 1970, was Claude W. Wardlaw of the University of Manchester, England. Both were near the end of very distinguished careers. In 1971 the Foundation, wishing to encourage younger investigators, requested the Pelton Award Committee to nominate candidates in the earlier stages of their careers.

The investigators who have received the Pelton Award include:

1969 – Ralph H. Wetmore, Harvard University
1970 – Claude W. Wardlaw, University of Manchester
1972 – Paul B. Green, Stanford University
1975 – Peter K. Hepler, Stanford University
1978 – Brian E. S. Gunning, Australia National University
1980 – Lewis J. Feldman, University of California, Berkeley
1983 – Todd J. Cooke, University of Maryland
1985 – Tsvi Sachs, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
1988 – Scott D. Russell, University of Oklahoma
1989 – Elizabeth M. Lord, University of California, Riverside
1993 – R. Scott Poethig, University of Pennsylvania
1994 – Elliot M. Meyerowitz, California Institute of Technology
1996 – Sarah Hake, Plant Gene Expression Center, USDA, Albany
1998 – Donald R. Kaplan, University of California, Berkeley
2000 – Ben J. G. Scheres, University of Utrecht
2002 – Karl J. Niklas, Cornell University
2004 – William Friedman, University of Colorado, Boulder
2006 – Tobias Baskin, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
2012 – Martha C. Hawes, University of Arizona