History

Everett Stanley Luttrell was born January 10, 1916 in Richmond, VA.  A survivor of polio contracted as an infant, he never complained about his physical afflictions or pain he had as an adult.  Following his graduation from high school, his mother enrolled him in the University of Richmond.

At the encouragement of a professor, he continued his studies at Duke University, completing his B.S. in biology in 1937.  He presented his M.A. thesis entitled “A tar spot disease of American holly and the life history of the causal organism” in 1939.  One year later he completed his doctoral dissertation entitled “The morphology and development of some fungi parasitic on trees within Duke Forest.”

In 1942, Luttrell began working with the Department of Plant Pathology at the Georgia Experiment Station in Griffin, GA.  He left Georgia for an Assistant Professor of Botany at the University of Missouri in 1947.  His work while at Missouri resulted in the 1951 publication of the “Taxonomy of the Pyrenomycetes.”  Prior to the publication of this work, he had returned to his old position at Griffin in 1949 because the teaching load of 11 classes in 4 subjects at Missouri left little time for his research.  In 1955, Luttrell became the Head of Plant Pathology at Griffin.  And in July of 1966, he moved the Athens campus to become head of the Department of Plant Pathology and Plant Genetics, as well as the Chairman of the statewide Division of Plant Pathology.   Upon his move to the main campus, he took over the mycology courses previously taught by Julian Miller.

Once again, Luttrell found little time for research, so in 1970 he resigned from his administrative duties to return to teaching and research.  In 1979, Luttrell published a new system of classification for the conidial fungi.  Later years he was more interested in host-parasite interactions.  He developed a graduate course, “Phytopathology:  Principles and Theory” which soon became required of all the plant pathology graduate students.  It was a challenging course and Luttrell was often stymied by students who only studied for exams rather than to learn.

In 1986, he retired from his position as the D. W. Brooks Distinguished Professor of Plant Pathology.  Dr. E.S. Luttrell passed away two years later.