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Hugh Miller Raup (1901-1995) was an American botanist, ecologist and geographer who worked on natural history and natural resource management in diverse regions. In 1923 he received an A.B. from Wittenberg College. Immediately following his graduation, Hugh was appointed as an instructor in biology, a position he held while pursuing his A.M. In 1928 he received his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh, and was promoted to Assistant Professor at Wittenberg. Hugh left the college in 1932 to serve as a Research Assistant and Associate at Harvard, a position he held from 1932 to 1938. He joined the full-time faculty in 1938, rising ultimately to full professor and director of the Harvard Forest. Raup's association with Harvard also included the Arnold Arboretum, the Black Rock Forest and the Department of Botany. He retired in 1967 and then spent three years at Johns Hopkins as a Visiting Professor.
Beginning with his doctoral research on the vegetation and floristics of the Athabasca and Great Slave Lake area region in northern Canada, Raup commenced a lifelong pursuit documenting the plants and environment of the far north. He conducted phytogeographic surveys at Canada's Lake Athabasca, Slave River and Great Slave Lake, Wood Buffalo Park, the Peace River from Finlay Forks to Lake Athabasca, and Brintnell Lake (renamed Glacier Lake). Raup was the official biologist/anthropologist assigned to the US Army during the construction of the Alaska Highway. Raup later studied plants along the Alaska Highway from Dawson Creek, British Columbia to Whitehorse, Yukon to Fairbanks, Alaska. In later years he worked in other parts of the far north, including Vesters Vig in northeast Greenland.
Raup's wife Lucy, née Gibson (1902-1998), a lichenologist, travelled with him on many of these trips. Their studies from 1926 to 1935 were before air travel was common and when movement through the north was by steamboat, motor tug, canoe or skiff, packhorse, wagon or buckboard, and by backpacking. This meant that food, tents, extra clothing, blankets, plant presses and other equipment had to be portaged through sunshine, wind, rain, mosquitoes and black flies. Lucy was also the camp cook and she kept meticulous records of supplies and recipes for ensuing trips.
Their son Karl (1930-1986) first joined them on a trip in the summer of 1932 when he was two. He and his brother David (1933-2015) travelled with them on their trip to Brintnell Lake in 1939 and along the Alaska Highway in the 1940s. Karl Raup graduated from Colby College in Maine as a geologist. He enlisted in the US Air Force where he remained for 20 years, retiring as Lt. Colonel. David Raup became a palaeontologist who studied the fossil record and the diversity of life on earth. He retired to Washington Island on Lake Michigan.
In their last years Hugh and Lucy moved to Wisconsin to be closer to their son David. The Raups, married on June 20, 1925, were together for over 70 years.
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