Virginia R. Ferris
01/01/2020
Dr. Ferris passed away during the weekend of August 12-13, 2017
at her home in West Lafayette, Indiana.
Virginia R. Ferris is a native of Abilene, Kansas, and was
educated at
Wellesley College (B.A.) and Cornell University (M.S. and Ph.D.). She joined the
faculty at Cornell in 1954, and later moved to Purdue University where she is
currently full professor (awarded 1974). Her administrative duties have included
a four year term as Assistant Dean of the Graduate School, followed by three
years as Assistant Provost.
Her research and teaching, shared with John M. Ferris, have focused on
systematics and ecology of soil and freshwater nematodes and her early
publications dealt with quantification and analysis of whole ecosystems of
nematodes in diverse habitats, as well as studies of plant parasitic nematodes
of particular interest to mid-west agriculture.
John M. and Virginia R. Ferris
(Photograph by L. Miller, 1996)
An early mentor was Gerald
Thorne who tutored her in systematics of the
Dorylaimida, leading to a series of
systematic monographs in Dorylaimida. Eventually, her interests shifted to plant
parasitic cyst nematodes, and her current research centers around the
systematics of cyst nematodes plus a study of soybean resistance genes to
soybean cyst nematode (SCN). As systematics became a more rigorous discipline
with new algorithms for testing and analyzing large data sets, she investigated
the use of molecular data. During the1980s she explored the uses for systematics
of protein pattern data obtained by two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel
electrophoresis. In 1987, with the help of a career development grant from NSF,
she learned to use molecular techniques and to acquire and analyze DNA data in a
systematic study of cyst nematodes and their relatives. Recently, Virginia was
part of the team which developed the SCN-resistant soybean germplasm CystX; the
first commercial seeds containing CystX were sold to farmers in late fall, 2000.
Her research has received consistent and strong funding from NSF, USDA-NRI, EPA,
and commodity groups, and her many publications include journal articles,
abstracts, book chapters, reviews, and a patent.
Virginia is a founding member of the Society of Nematologists and has served as
Secretary, Vice-President and President. She was an Associate Editor of the
Journal of Nematology, and co-Editor for early volumes of the Nematology
Newsletter. She has also been active in other organizations and served two terms
on the Board of Directors of the Association of Systematics Collections, and was
a member of the Governing Council of the Society of Systematic Zoology (now the
Society of Systematic Biology). She was elected to three six-year terms as a
national Senator of Phi Beta Kappa and served on the PBK Senate Executive
Committee for nine years. She has been a member of committees to review
departments and research organizations and serves on review panels for NSF and
USDA-NRI. She has organized and chaired symposia and given many invitational
lectures to groups interested in nematodes, systematics and evolution, and
nematode problems in agriculture.
Virginia has received many awards. At Wellesley she was elected to Phi Beta
Kappa and Sigma Xi and at Cornell she received a National Science Foundation
Pre-Doctoral Fellowship. At Purdue she won the Schleman Gold Medallion Award for
outstanding woman faculty and the outstanding woman faculty award from the
Associated Women's Students. In 1988 she received the Alumnae Achievement Award
from Wellesley College. She is a Fellow and an Honorary Member of the Society of
Nematologists.
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