People of ASP

Harry H.S. Fong, a Charter Member of the ASP, is Professor Emeritus of Pharmacognosy at the Univ. Illinois at Chicago (UIC), Associate Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Traditional Medicine at UIC, and Adjunct Prof., RMIT Univ., Melbourne, Australia. His research interests include natural agents useful against cancer, malaria, HIV and TB, and standardization of herbal medicines/botanical dietary supplements. Harry immigrated to the US at age 14, and thought that, like his father and grandfather, he would make his fortune as a pharmacy owner. However, as a pharmacy student at Univ. Pittsburgh (Class 1959), he met Norm Farnsworth, who enlisted Gordon Svoboda to convince Harry that $100/month as a grad. student was better than $500/month as a pharmacist. As Farnsworth’s first graduate student (MS, 1961), Fong learned to smoke cigars and swear like a sailor. It took Jack Beal at Ohio State four years (1961-1965) to undo some of those habits (and to impart some of the Beal humility). Among the things Harry prizes most are his service to the ASP, the Society of Economic Botany (SEB), and WHO. He has served on numerous committees of ASP, and as Associate Editor of J. Nat. Prod. (1993-1998), and he is a past president of ASP and SEB. He is a member of the WHO Traditional Medicine Expert Panel (1997-present) and sits on the International Advisory Board on Hong Kong Chinese Materia Medica Standards (1992-present). He is an author or co-author on over 165 research papers, book chapters, etc., including the WHO Monographs on Selected Medicinal Plants Vol. 1-4, the WHO Guidelines on GACP, and he is a drafter of the National Policy on Traditional Medicine for Papua New Guinea (2000-2010). He has received many awards, but he is most proud of the many former graduate students at UIC, whom he mentored, formally and informally, and of his three children who followed him into the academic world as Ph.D./M.D. research scientists. (HF)