Past Waller Lecture Speakers
- Dr. Harold C. Bold “Some Investigations of Microalgae of Soil”, 1976
- Dr. George W. Beadle “The Mystery of Maize”, 1977
- Dr. Kenneth V. Thimann “Senescence in Leaves”, 1978
- Dr. Peter Raven “Breeding Systems and Evolution in the Onagraceae”, 1979
- Dr. John Heslop-Harrison “The Physiology of Pollen-Stigma Interactions”, 1980
- Dr. Melvin Calvin “Growing and Engineering of Hydrocarbons”, 1981
- Dr. Harlan P. Banks “Patterns of Evolution among Early Land Plants”, 1982
- Dr. Sherwin Carlquist “Islands: Laboratories of Evolution”, 1983
- Dr. Jeremy Pickett-Heaps “Mitosis in Diatoms: New Information on an Old Problem”, 1984
- Dr. Günter Blobel “Protein Traffic across Membranes”, 1985
- Dr. John L. Harper “A Reductionist in a Field of Grass”, 1986
- Dr. William G. Chaloner “The Inevitable Seed”, 1987
- Dr. Winslow R. Briggs “Plants that Follow the Sun”, 1988
- Dr. C. Ledyard Stebbins “One Man’s Life with Plant Chromosomes and Evolution: Problems and Prospects”, 1989
- Gene E. Likens “Acid Rain: Science and Politics”, 1990
- Virginia Walbot “Impact of the Mutator Transposable Element Family on Maize”, 1991
- Michael T. Clegg “Evolution of Plant Genes”, 1992
- Ursula W. Goodenough “Sexual Signaling and Mating Type in Chlamydomonas”, 1993
- Andrew H. Knoll “Life before Trilobites”, 1994
- Eric E. Conn “Cyanogenesis: The Production of Hydrogen Cyanide by Plants and Animals”, 1995
- Dr. Harold A. Mooney “Biotic Disruptions- Global Consequences”, 1996
- Dr. Elliott Meyerowitz “The ABC’s of Flower Development: How Genes Make Flowers”, 1997
- Dr. Elizabeth Kellogg “Grass for Breakfast”, 1998
- Dr. Jen Sheen “Understanding and Manipulating Plant Growth and Stress Responses”, 1999
- Dr. John Browse “Academia, Industry, and the Future of Plant Biotechnology”, 2000
- Dr. George P. Redei “The Origin of Research with Arabidopsis: What Lies Ahead”, 2002
- Dr, Kenneth Keegstra “Twenty-Five Years of Progress in Understanding Chloroplast Biogenesis”, 2003
- Dr. Andrew Staehelin “Seeing More than Meets the Eye: The Science and Art of Electron Microscopy”, 2004
- Dr. Xing Wang Deng “Rice Genomics, from Research to Application”, 2005
- Dr. William J. Lucas “Plants as Supracellular Organisms”, 2006
- Dr. Natasha Raikhel “Looking to the Future of Plant Biology”, 2007
- Dr. Craig S. Pikkard “Whatever Works: The Logic of Life”, 2008
- Dr. Xinnian Dong “What Does it Take to Have a Career in Science? – X. Dong’s Answer”, 2009
- Dr. Mary Rumpho-Kennedy “Symbiosis and Biological Novelty”, 2010
- Dr. Sabeeha Merchant “TAG, you’re it! Basic Science for Algal Biofuels”, 2011
- Dr. Shou-wein Ding, “RNAi-Mediated antiviral immunity in plants and animals”, 2012
- Dr. James Carrington, “Making an Impact through Plant Science”, 2013
- Dr. Peggy Lemaux, “Feast, Famine and the Future of Food”, 2014
- Dr. Richard Amasino “Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and Public Perception of Science”, 2015
- Dr. Harry Klee “Why your supermarket tomatoes taste so bland and what we can do about it”, 2016
- Dr. Jonathan Trent “Have you ever wondered how newly synthesized proteins fold inside living cells?”, 2017
- Dr. Pamela Ronald “Serving Up Science: Plant Genetics and the Future of Food”, 2019
- Dr. Zachary Lippman "You say tomato, I say...", 2023
- Dr. José R. Dinneny. “A tale of two slopes: How roots hold the key to our future in this century and the next”, 2025