In memoriam
Marvin Eli Jensen
Marvin Eli Jensen, a member of ASA for more than 60 years, died at the age of 95 on 30 Mar. 2022. He was born on 23 Dec. 1926 on a farm in Clay County, MN to John and Inga Jensen. His father emigrated from Norway and his mother’s parents did as well. He attended the Northwest School of Agriculture for two years and enlisted in the Navy at the age of 17 in 1944. After being discharged in 1946, he married the love of his life, Doris Ann Lundberg of Ulen, MN, the following year.
He received a B.S. degree in Agriculture in 1951 and an M.S. degree in Agricultural Engineering in 1952 from North Dakota State University (NDSU) where he was on the staff from 1952 to 1955. He received a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Colorado State University (CSU) in 1965. From 1955 to 2007, he was employed by the USDA-ARS in Texas, Colorado, Idaho, and Maryland. His primary area of research was crop and irrigation water requirements. He traveled internationally extensively as part of his work and received numerous invitations to be a keynote speaker and participate in workshops. He was elected president of the International Commission of Irrigation and Drainage (ICID) in 1984 and as a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1988 and the ARS Science Hall of Fame in 2003. His work in irrigation helped make computerized irrigation scheduling for more efficient crop water use possible.
Jensen was preceded in death by his wife of 62 years, Doris; his parents; and several brothers and sisters. He is survived by a brother, Anton of Ankeny, IA; and a sister, Lillian (Jensen) Wefald of Prior Lake, MN. He is also survived by his children, Connie Heidemann (Bernie Schutte) of Kimberly, ID; Jeffrey Jensen (Mary) of Bainbridge Island, WA; and Eric Jensen (Lisa) of Westminster, MD as well as grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nephews, and nieces.
Arthur Gerald Matches
ASA and CSSA Fellow Arthur Gerald (Jerry) Matches, a member of ASA and CSSA for 63 years, died on 12 Jan. 2022. He was born in Portland, OR on 28 Jan. 1929. He earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees at Oregon State University and Ph.D. at Purdue, majoring in Crop Physiology and Ecology with minors in Statistics and Animal Nutrition. He began his career at New Mexico State University in 1960. From there, he moved to Columbia, MO in 1961 where he became Research Scientist with the USDA-ARS and Professor of Agronomy at the University of Missouri. In 1981, Dr. Matches became the first Thornton Distinguished Chair in the Department of Plant and Soil Science at Texas Tech University in Lubbock—a position he held until retirement in 1994.
- Matches served as associate editor for Agronomy Journal and Crop Science and as a technical editor for Crop Science. He received the Medallion Award of the American Forage and Grassland Council (AFGC) and was twice named Outstanding Researcher in the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Texas Tech. He served as president of AFGC and as a member of the board of directors of AFGC, ASA, and CSSA.
Matches was known nationally and internationally for his systems approach to forage and grazing management and for research in forage quality and physiology. He emphasized species that provide forage at times when high quality forage was limited.
He was preceded in death by his wife, Roberta “Bobbie” Matches (Miller), and grandson, Ian Matches; and is survived by his children, Susan DeLano of Phoenix, AZ; Sarah Matches of Fort Worth, TX; and Tom Matches of Overland Park, KS as well as five grandchildren and one great-grandson.
M. Rosalind Morris
M. Rosalind Morris, Professor Emeritus of Plant Cytogenetics at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and the first women honored as an ASA Fellow, died 26 Mar. 2022, just a few weeks shy of her 102nd birthday. She was born on 8 May 1920 in Ruthin, North Wales to schoolteacher parents. The family moved to Canada in 1925 where they had a fruit farm in southwestern Ontario. Morris worked on the farm with her parents and developed an interest in agriculture.
Dr. Morris received a B.S. degree in Horticulture in 1942 at the Ontario Agricultural College, which is now part of Guelph University. She then entered a graduate program at Cornell University where she had a teaching assistantship. She received her Ph.D. in Plant Breeding and Genetics from Cornell—one of the first women to do so.
In 1947, Morris became an Assistant Professor in the Agronomy Department at the University of Nebraska. She was the first woman faculty member in the department. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 1953 and Professor in 1958. Her 43-year teaching and research career at the University of Nebraska ended with her retirement in 1990.
Morris’s initial research was on the effects of radiation on corn after which her main focus was on the cytogenetics of wheat. In this decades-long research, she developed chromosome substitution lines of wheat that were used worldwide in research to characterize genes that would be useful in breeding improved wheats. The chromosome substitution lines were developed by transferring a single chromosome pair from one wheat variety to another variety.
Morris was an excellent teacher. The primary course that she taught was a very comprehensive graduate course in cytogenetics. She co-authored the book Chromosome Biology, a comprehensive and practical textbook in 1990.
In addition to ASA, Morris was a Fellow of CSSA and AAAS and received numerous other awards. She served as the president of the Nebraska Academy of Sciences in 1980; the first woman president in more than 50 years.
Steven E. Ullrich
ASA and CSSA Fellow Dr. Steven E. “Steve” Ullrich passed away on 2 Mar. 2022 at his home outside of Moscow, ID. He was born 25 Feb. 1946, in Beloit, WI. He attended the University of Michigan where he met and married his wife Mary and earned a B.S. in Wildlife Management in 1968.
Ullrich worked as a wildlife biologist before joining the Peace Corps with his wife, spending two years teaching in Malawi and Ghana. They later moved to Moscow, ID where Dr. Ullrich pursued a master’s degree in biology at the University of Idaho. After graduating in 1972, he worked as a ranger at Yellowstone National Park before beginning his doctoral studies in Crop Breeding and Genetics at Montana State University in Bozeman. Upon earning his Ph.D. in 1978, he joined the faculty at Washington State University (WSU) as an Assistant Professor.
At WSU, Ullrich served as head of the barley breeding program and taught numerous undergraduate and graduate courses in crop production and quality, world agricultural systems, and plant breeding. He mentored 75 graduate students, and he and his wife often opened their home to students far from home. During his career, Ullrich and his colleagues developed and released numerous feed, food, and malting barley varieties. He was a collaborator in the United States Barley Genome Project from its inception in 1993 and authored or co-authored more than 300 publications.
In addition to his many academic contributions, those who knew and worked with Ullrich will always remember him for his love of nature and the outdoors. Ullrich is survived by Mary; his children Sarah (Brian) and Nate (Livi); grandchildren Gavin, Elise, Soren, and Evan; his sister Linda; and nephews Michael and Pieter.
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