Upchurch, Robert Phillip

Born in Wake County, North Carolina, on February 9, 1928, Robert Phillip Upchurch graduated from the North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering (later North Carolina State University) with a B.S. in crop science in 1948. He received a master's degree in 1949 and in 1953 was awarded a Ph.D. in plant physiology from the University of California, Davis. Upchurch was a member of the faculty at North Carolina State College from 1949 to 1965. From 1955 to 1957 Upchurch served in the United States Air Force with the rank of second lieutenant. From 1965 through 1975 he worked for the Monsanto Corporation in St. Louis, Missouri. From 1975 to 1990 Upchurch was a professor and head of the Plant Sciences Department at the University of Arizona.

Robert Phillip Upchurch was born in Wake County, North Carolina, on February 9, 1928. He graduated from North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering (later North Carolina State University) with a B.S. in Crop Science in 1948. He received a master's degree in 1949. In 1953, he was awarded a Ph.D. in plant physiology from the University of California, Davis.

Upchurch served as an instructor at North Carolina State College from 1949 to 1953, and as an assistant professor from 1953 to 1955 and again from 1957 to 1960. He served in the United States Air Force, Air Research and Development Command, with the rank of lieutenant from 1955 to 1957. He continued to serve in the Air Force Reserve until 1967, retiring with the rank of captain. Upchurch was active in research that established the principles of the behavior of herbicides in soil and the development of weed control practices for peanuts and cotton.

From 1965 through 1975 Upchurch worked for the Monsanto Corporation as the manager of research for their Agricultural Division in St. Louis, Missouri. From 1975 to 1990 Upchurch was a professor and head of the Plant Sciences Department at the University of Arizona. While at the University of Arizona Dr. Upchurch also served as the Director of Development and Alumni Affairs and as the Director of the College of Agriculture's Arboretum Affairs.

Upchurch retired from teaching at the University of Arizona in 1990, and pursued a career as a farmer and real estate developer in the St. Louis, Missouri, area. He also developed an extensive and thoroughly researched genealogical study of his family origins in America, documenting ancestral ties to an original member of the seventeenth-century Virgina Charter Company, Michael Upchurch, one of the first English colonists to settle in what is now Wake County, North Carolina.

Professional organizations include Sigma Xi, American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, Weed Society of America, American Society of Plant Physiology, Arizona Crop Improvement Association, Arizona Academy of Science, the Soil and Water Conservation Society of America, and the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST).

To read a transcript of an oral history interview of Robert Phillip Upchurch, click here .