Henri Stehlé

Henri Stehlé (1909 to 1983) was a French agronomist, botanist and ecologist specialized in tropical agriculture. He trained in agronomic engineering at the Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Agronomie de Grignon in 1931, specialized in tropical agriculture at the Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Agriculture Coloniale and in 1947 completed a PhD at Montpellier on the phytogeography of the forest types of the Caribbean, which earned him a prize of the Institut de France. He directed the Experimental Gardens of Guadeloupe from 1934 to 1938 and of Martinique from 1938 to 1946, established the Schools of Agriculture in these French departments, and in 1949 founded the Agronomic Research Center of INRA Antilles-Guyane in Guadeloupe, of which he was director until 1964. As a botanist he worked mainly in Guadeloupe and Martinique with his wife Madeleine Stehlé and Father Louis Quentin, focusing on the Orchidaceae and Piperaceae.