Watson MacMillan Laetsch

Watson MacMillan (Mac) Laetsch, scientist, administrator, and farmer, died at his home in Berkeley on January 5, 2020. He had served the University for 55 years, before and after retirement. Mac is survived by his older brother Bruce, sons John and Krishen, daughter-in-law Jenny, and grandson Charlie.

Mac Laetsch was born on January 19, 1933, in Bellingham, Washington to a mother with a passion for history and a Protestant minister father who moved the family from congregation to congregation around the country. Mac excelled in athletics, but the state of Indiana also named him its “Outstanding Boy Scientist,” prompting him to turn down an athletics scholarship to Purdue University to study science at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. At Wabash, Mac triple-majored in botany, zoology, and history before winning a Fulbright scholarship to study plant biology in Delhi, India in 1956.

It was in Delhi that Mac met his future wife, Sita Priyadarshini Capildeo, to whom he was married for sixty-one years until her death on January 10, 2019. Sita contributed immensely to Mac’s career. She was especially engaged in the social activities of the Department of Botany, and she was famously known for baking pies for the broadcasters of football games at Cal’s Memorial Stadium. Mac and Sita were engaged in international outreach at many levels. Mac was a member of the Indo-US Subcommission from 1978 until 1996, an organization that was set up to support educational programs in India. Mac was a frequent visitor to Bhuttan, and he and Sita hosted for a year the youngest daughter of the king in their home in Berkeley. Bhuttan was a relatively closed country, but Mac helped open it up to tourism from the US by leading Bear Trek visits starting in 1988.

Mac served three months in the US Army and earned his PhD in biology at Stanford in 1961. He went on to do postdoctoral research at University College London as a National Science Foundation senior fellow and taught briefly at SUNY Stony Brook University before joining the Department of Botany at UC Berkeley in 1962.

Mac’s research expertise was in the field of experimental plant morphology. He was known for his work on the development of ferns, on plant tissue culture, and later on leaf anatomy of grasses, especially those engaged in C4 photosynthesis. His Ph.D. mentor at Stanford was Winslow Briggs; his dissertation was entitled, “Experimental Modification of Sporeling Ontogeny in Marsilea vestita.”

Mac made ground-breaking contributions to our understanding of the structure and distribution of chloroplasts in C4 plants and the unique architecture of their leaves. His work using electron microscopy showed that C4 plants have specialized chloroplasts located in bundle sheath cells which capture CO₂ in a four-carbon compound, and that they do this using an enzyme that functions well at low CO₂ and high O₂ concentrations. C4 plants can therefore capture CO₂ when its concentration is low and when O₂ concentrations are high, minimizing the wasteful phenomenon of photorespiration. In addition to his many scholarly publications, Mac published a popular textbook, “Plants: Basic Concepts in Botany”, and with Robert Cleland edited the volume, “Papers on Plant Growth and Development”, as well as serving as editor for “The Biological Perspective”, a collection of readings for introductory biology course students and their teachers. Among the many honors that he received was his election to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

From the time of his arrival at Berkeley, Mac was a dedicated teacher. He had gained experience as a Teaching Assistant at Stanford and as Assistant Professor of Biology at Stony Brook. At Berkeley he was a member of the Academic Senate Committee on Teaching and with others used this as a forum to revise beginning biology classes, especially the core Biology 1 series with the help of grants from NSF. Mac and several other math and science faculty at Berkeley also initiated an interdisciplinary PhD program known as SESAME, Search for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Education. This program focuses on developing new and innovative math and science educational programs to be used in the nation’s schools. Mac’s dedication to teaching led to his receipt of the campus’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 1974.

Mac served as director of the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden from 1969 to 1973, where he expanded programs, acreage, and holdings, in particular the addition of the Mather Redwood Grove. He served as Assistant Director of the Lawrence Hall of Science from 1970-1971 then as Director from 1972 to 1980, where he initiated several new programs including the Health Activities Project and OBIS, the Outdoor Biology Instructional Strategies Program. But perhaps one of Mac’s most enduring legacies was securing a strong bond between the Hall and academic activities on the Berkeley campus.

Mac served as the Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Affairs at UC Berkeley (1980–1988). In this role he improved the rates of student retention and developed the community college transfer program. He also directed programs to dramatically increase the number of minority students and faculty. Mac was a proud champion of affirmative action, creating policies for recruiting and educating that contributed to the greatest increase in graduation rates of students of color within the entire University of California system. Mac called on his early experience as a visiting scholar at Tuskegee and Morehouse universities by drawing together faculty and students there with colleagues at UC Berkeley, establishing relationships between individuals and institutions at a time when such things were rare and setting an example for many to follow. In the foreword to Mac’s 2012 oral history, former UC Berkeley Chancellor Ira Michael Heyman described Mac as the driving force in the recruitment and admission of students of color to UC Berkeley. At the same time, he established the most diverse staff in the history of the university, with nine hundred full-time employees and a thousand part-time employees under his management. Mac also orchestrated major improvements in academic programs and undergraduate life. As the administrator responsible for athletics he oversaw the creation and implementation of model academic support programs for athletes, improved facilities—particularly for women’s athletics, and supported changes that made Berkeley football and basketball programs successful. While he supported football in those days, in later years he would hold forth on the ills of football at research universities, particularly the physical damage done to students’ brains. Additional information about Mac’s career can be found in the Bancroft Library Collection.

From 1988 to 1991, Mac served as Vice Chancellor for Development. He raised a record-breaking amount of money for the campus through the “Keeping the Promise” campaign, then the most successful fund-raising effort by any public university without a medical school. It established a model for public universities across the country. He was instrumental in raising the funds for dozens of projects and programs such as the reconstruction and modernization of the Valley Life Sciences Building. Long after Mac retired as VC for Development, he and Ira Michael Heyman led the successful and rapid effort to raise thirty-five million dollars to renovate the Bancroft Library building. Among other innovations in fund raising, Mac recruited support from abroad, establishing a fund-raising office in Tokyo, and making UC Berkeley the first public university to reach out to Asia to support higher education in the United States.

Following his retirement in 1991, Mac went on to co-chair the Bancroft Library capital campaign. He also served on the advisory board of the College of Natural Resources, on the Library Development Board, and as a trustee for the UC Press Foundation. In addition, he was the founding member and co-chair of the Mark Twain Luncheon Club and was actively involved in the Learning in Retirement program, which offers free courses for UC Berkeley retirees. As a member of the Faculty Club Monks Chorus, he performed at the Faculty Club Christmas celebrations each year, and he and Sita led over thirty educational Bear Treks/Cal Adventure tours.

Mac’s commitment to the Bay Area community extended far and wide. He helped to found and was first president of the California Native Plant Society and served on several institutional boards, including at the San Francisco Zoological Society, the California Academy of Sciences, and Alta Bates Hospital. He held a leadership position with Children's Hospital Oakland and its Research Institute, worked on an international science museum collaborative, and, for many years, served on the Indo-U.S. Subcommittee for Education and Culture. In his free time, he grew commercial walnuts, wine grapes, and antique varieties of apple.

Mac Laetsch influenced all who interacted with him. He had an enormous appetite for work and a real skill for reaching out and building bridges to achieve great things. His impact on teaching, research, and fundraising activities as well as on the initiatives and organizations he led was huge. Mac was indeed larger than life.

Eleanor Crump
Lewis Feldman
Russell Jones
Renee Sung
2021