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John (Jack) Hawkes, OBE, died peacefully on 6th September, 2007, aged 92 years. He was Emeritus Professor of Plant Biology at the University of Birmingham. Jack Hawkes will be known to many members of this list as a pioneer in plant genetic resources, heavily involved in the founding of the IBPGR (now Bioversity International) and as an expert on the wild relatives of potatoes. Jack was also a link with history through his memories of Vavilov, who he met in the 1930s. Hawkes's extensive archives include field notebooks for numerous wild potato collecting trips in South America, and notes relating to the early history of the potato, and are mostly held in the Archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. A small archaeobotanical collection relating to the thesis of a student is held at Kew's Economic Botany Collection (Martins, R. 1976. New archaeological techniques for the study of ancient root crops in Peru. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Birmingham, Birmingham.) Mark