Ralph Porter Collins, emeritus professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, died on March 9 after a short illness.<\/p>\n
He was born in Alpena, Mich. on Nov. 26, 1927 to Ralph Victor Collins and Julia Smart Collins; grew up in Alpena, Mich.; and graduated from Alpena High School in 1945. He attended Michigan State University for one year, before serving in the U.S. Army as a medical technician for one year. After resuming his studies at Michigan State University, he obtained a BS, MS, and in 1957 a Ph.D. in botany and plant pathology.<\/p>\n
In 1957, he began his career at the University of Connecticut in Storrs as an instructor in botany. He retired from UConn in 1989 as a full professor and head of the botany section. After leaving UConn, Collins took a research position with the National Cancer Institute as an AIDS Expert in the Division of Cancer Treatment. He retired from that post in 2001.<\/p>\n
During his retirement, Collins was able to concentrate on reading and gardening. He was particularly interested in the Civil War and World War II.<\/p>\n
Collins is survived by his wife, Lesley S. Daniels Collins; his daughter and grandson, Carol L. Collins and Nolan Pieper; his son, Blair A. Collins; his first wife and mother of his children, Helen J. Collins of Storrs; and his stepson, David, and his family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Collins retired from UConn in 1989 as a full professor and head of the botony section. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":50011,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1858],"class_list":["post-123167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 04:41:21","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/50011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123167"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=123167"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=123167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}