Vicki Funk

Vicki Ann Funk (November 26, 1947 – October 22, 2019) was a Senior Research Botanist and Curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, known for her work on members of the composite family (Asteraceae) including collecting plants in many parts of the world, as well as her synthetic work on phylogenetics and biogeography.[1][2][3]
Biography.
Funk was born on November 26, 1947, in Owensboro, Kentucky, to Edwin Joseph Funk and Betty Ann Massenburg Funk. She had two brothers: Edwin Jr and Jared Kirk Funk. She grew up in Owensboro, and a few Air Force bases before she was in elementary school. Funk studied Biology and History at Murray State University in Kentucky and received her B.S. in 1969. She had wanted to attend medical school, but decided against it after volunteering at a hospital one summer. After graduating, she lived and worked part-time in Germany for two years and returned to the United States to teach high school for one year. She then spent a summer at the Hancock Biological Station on Kentucky Lake. There she discovered her passion for field work and research.
In 1975 she received an M.S. in Biology at Murray State where her thesis was "A Floristic and Geologic Survey of Selected Seeps of Calloway County, KY". Her advisor was Dr. Marian Fuller. She spent the summer of 1975 studying aquatic plants at Stone Lab at Lake Erie. In the fall she started a PhD program at Ohio State University with Ron Stuckey as her advisor. She later changed her studies to Compositae with Tod Stuessy. She was an assistant curator at the Ohio State University from 1976 until 1977. In 1980, she graduated from the Ohio State University with a Ph.D. writing her thesis on "The Systematics of Montanoa Cerv. (Asteraceae)," which was published in 1982 in the "Memoirs of the New York Botanical Garden". In 1981 she spent a postdoctoral year at the New York Botanical Garden[5] where she studied Compositae with Art Cronquist and the newly developing field of phylogenetics at the American Museum of Natural History.
Funk was appointed as a research scientist and curator at the US National Herbarium of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in 1981. In 1986 she published "A Phylogenetic analysis of the Orchidaceae" (Smithsonian Institution Press) with Dr. . In 2004 she became a Senior Research Scientist and Curator of Compositae at the US National Herbarium Department of Botany.
Funk's research included detailing evolutionary relationships and biogeogrpahy using plant DNA.[6] Funk co-discovered the critically endangered "Bidens meyeri" in Rapa Iti, French Polynesia. Funk's work shows that this "Bidens" species may represent the end of a migration from North American through the Society Islands to the Austral Islands.[7]
Beginning in 1988, she served as head of the Biological Diversity of the Guiana Shield Program (BDG), and in 2015 began the Global Genome Initiative for Gardens, both headquartered at the Smithsonian Institution. Both of these programs were passed on to others in 2018. She was also an adjunct professor at George Mason University and Duke University.[3]
Funk was a member of a number of societies and served in a position for many. She was the president of the Society of Systematic Biologists in 1998–1999, American Society of Plant Taxonomists 2006–2007, the International Biogeography Society in 2007 to 2009, the Botanical Society of Washington in 2014, and the International Association of Plant Taxonomists from 2011 to 2017. She was in many other positions in these societies and others.
Awards and honors.
In 2001, the government of Queensland awarded Funk a Queensland Research Fellowship. In 2009 she was received two awards: the Secretary's Award for Excellence in Collaboration, and the National Museum of Natural History Science Achievement Award. In 2010 she was awarded the Stebbins' Medal for the best publication in Plant Systematics or Plant Evolution in the period 2007 to 2009 from the International Association for Plant Taxonomy. In 2012 she won the Smithsonian's Secretary's Award for Outstanding Publication and became a board member for the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center for two years. In 2014 she won the Rolf Dahlgren Prize for her major contributions to the understanding of the systematics and evolution of the angiosperms.
Funk has also ben recognized for lifetime achievements in her field. In 2018 she won the Asa Gray Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Plant Taxonomists. In 2019, the Linnean Society of London recognized Funk with its Linnean Medal, for lifetime service to the natural sciences.
In 2019 the American Society of Plant Taxonomists announced the new Vicki Funk Fund for Graduate Student Research in her honor.
In 2005, scientists named a new species of ant after Vicki Funk. This species, "Pheidole funki" is known only from a single specimen collected from Guyana. The genus "Vickia" is named in honor of Vicki Funk's contribution towards systematics of Compositae. The species "Xenophyllum funkianum" J. Calvo from the Ecuadorian Andes was named after her in 2020 in a posthumous co-publication. "Baccharis funkiae," a narrow endemic species of Compositae from Uruguay is named after Vicki Funk. Indian botanists named a new species of Gesneriaceae as "Didymocarpus vickifunkiae" to honor her contributions.
In November 2020 the Journal of Systematics and Evolution dedicated a special issue on collection-based systematics and biogeography as a tribute to Vicki Funk.
Select publications.
She was the author or co-author of over 280 publications.
Top five cited papers of all time:
Top five cited papers in the last five years (2013 – August 2018):