Obituary of Robert W. Embree

Robert William ("Bob") Embree died peacefully from congestive heart failure in the company of family on June 29, 2015 at the Solon Care Center. Robert was born on a farm in Wayland Twp., Pottawattamie County, Iowa on Dec. 9, 1932, first child and only son of William Earl and Geneva Pearl Embree. He is survived by his children Emily Caroline Embree (Alex Dinh), Anna Alice Embree, and Jennie Louise Embree (David Johnson), his grandchildren Anneke, Donovan, and August Johnson, his sisters Mary Hidlebaugh (Everett) and Ruth Embree (Ray Tasker), and his former spouse Caroline Dieterle to whom he was married in 1959; they divorced in 1984. Robert graduated from Griswold High School and earned his Bachelor's Degree in Biology at Simpson College before completing a Master's Degree in Botany at the University of Nebraska, and a PhD in Botany at the University of California at Berkeley (1961). His area of expertise was mycology. He spent 2 years in Britain on a Post-doctoral Fellowship at Birkbeck College, University of London, after which he taught at UC Berkeley for one academic year (1963-64); he then accepted a position on the faculty of Brown University, where he taught Botany and mycology until the summer of 1968. Robert joined the University of Iowa Botany Dept. faculty at the beginning of the 1968 fall semester, achieved tenure, and taught at the UI until his retirement in 1998. In addition to his teaching and research, Robert worked with the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics identifying mushrooms whose toxicity needed to be known after people had ingested them – very often children whose worried parents brought them to the poison control center. Robert was a scholar who lived his discipline every day of his life. He was a very knowledgeable naturalist and organismal biologist as well as being a botanist and mycologist. Robert read widely, and his other interests included art and antiques. He was collector of curiosities, and an experimental horticulturalist. Robert's wish was to be cremated and to have no formal funeral service. The family wishes to thank the staff of the Solon Care Center and Iowa City Hospice for the excellent care they provided. The peony pictured was created by Bob through cross-pollination of two selected parent plants. He was very proud of this plant and its blossoms.