Coy Webster Waller
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| Coy Webster Waller | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1914 |
| Died | April 1998 Oxford, Mississippi, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Pharmaceutical chemist |
| Institutions | University of Mississippi |
| Known for | The 1968 marijuana research programme of the National Institute of Mental Health; Marihuana: an annotated bibliography (1976, 1982) |
Coy Webster Waller (1914 – April 1998) was an American pharmaceutical chemist at the University of Mississippi. By an account of 1976, he drew up for the National Institute of Mental Health in 1968, after a career in industry, the research programme under which the university began to grow marijuana for research.[1]: 59–61 He joined the university that year as associate director of its Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences and was its director from 1970.[2] The university's School of Pharmacy calls him the founder of its marijuana cultivation programme.[3] With Carlton E. Turner and others he compiled Marihuana: an annotated bibliography, published in two volumes in 1976 and 1982.[4][5]
Chemistry in industry
In 1945 Waller completed a phytochemical study of Larrea divaricata.[6] In 1976 he told Anthony Haden-Guest of High Times that he had grown some marijuana while teaching in the state of Washington from 1939 to 1941, and so knew a fair amount about the plant. Haden-Guest wrote that the sequential birth-control pill had been developed under Waller's direction, and that after 24 years in industry he decided to return to research.[1]: 59–61
The 1968 programme
In Haden-Guest's account, Waller went to Washington, D.C. in 1968 and found the government concerned about drugs. He asked what was being done on marijuana and was invited to draw up a programme for an ad hoc committee. Over three months he prepared one, costed at $130,000, and presented it to a committee convened by the National Institute of Mental Health, which accepted it. Waller said that so little was known of the plant's botany and chemistry that an outside person was needed. Mississippi was chosen for several reasons: the Department of Agriculture had grown Cannabis sativa for fibre there since the Second World War, the state was long and narrow, with a variety of soils, and the first programme called for three separate gardens. Norman Doorenbos at the university was also eager to take the project on. Doorenbos was put in charge of it.[1]: 59–61
The university's own history of the project dates the contract to 1968. A programme committee of the institute offered a contract to supply standardised marijuana to researchers, and Doorenbos, who chaired the Department of Pharmacognosy, applied for it and won it. Waller joined the university the same year as associate director of the Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, the School of Pharmacy's research arm, and became its director in 1970.[2] In 1976 Haden-Guest wrote that Waller was a director of the institute and that the garden came within his domain.[1]: 59–61
Research on cannabis
Waller was a co-author of the project's report of 1971 on nine strains grown in Mississippi from seed of several origins, which compared their chemistry with plant age, sex and part.[7] The same year he wrote on the chemistry of marihuana in Pharmacological Reviews.[8] The first volume of the annotated bibliography, compiled with Jacqueline J. Johnson, Judy Buelke and Turner, was published by Macmillan in New York in 1976 and ran to 560 pages.[4] The second, with Rashmi S. Nair, Ann F. McAllister, Beverly S. Urbanek and Turner, followed in 1982 with 620 pages.[5] Richard Evans Schultes reviewed it in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology in 1984.[9]
The university counts the study of cannabinoids for treating glaucoma and work on a natural remedy for poison ivy among his main research contributions. Mahmoud A. ElSohly, who later directed the marijuana project, assisted with his research for several years before Waller retired in 1979.[3]
Later years and memorials
Waller died in April 1998 at Baptist Memorial Hospital-North Mississippi in Oxford.[10] The Coy Waller Laboratory Complex, built in 1989 to give the marijuana project its own laboratory and horticultural space, was extended in 2000 with an indoor growing facility, a second vault and a laboratory for processing plants.[2] In 2004 the School of Pharmacy established the Coy W. Waller Distinguished Lecture in his honour.[11] The 15th lecture, in October 2018, was to be given by ElSohly on building on Waller's legacy.[3]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Haden-Guest, Anthony (November 1976). "The garden". High Times. No. 15. p. 59 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "History". Marijuana Research. School of Pharmacy, University of Mississippi. Archived from the original on 24 January 2026. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Marijuana Project head to deliver pharmacy school's Waller Lecture". Ole Miss News. University of Mississippi. 17 October 2018. Retrieved 12 October 2026.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Farnsworth, Norman R. (June 1977). "Marihuana: an annotated bibliography. By Coy W. Waller, Jacqueline J. Johnson, Judy Buelke, and Carlton E. Turner". Book review. Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences. 66 (6): 909–910. doi:10.1002/jps.2600660656.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Dougherty, Kathleen K. (August 1983). "Coy W. Waller, Rashmi S. Nair, Ann F. McAllister, Beverly S. Urbanek and Carlton E. Turner: Marihuana: an annotated bibliography, volume II". Book review. Journal of Applied Toxicology. 3 (4): 220. doi:10.1002/jat.2550030411.
- ↑ "Waller, Coy Webster, 1914-". Library of Congress Name Authority File. Library of Congress. n82029567. Retrieved 12 October 2026.
- ↑ Fetterman, P.S.; Keith, E.S.; Waller, C.W.; Guerrero, O.; Doorenbos, N.J.; Quimby, M.W. (August 1971). "Mississippi-grown Cannabis sativa L.: preliminary observation on chemical definition of phenotype and variations in tetrahydrocannabinol content versus age, sex, and plant part". Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences. 60 (8): 1246–1249. doi:10.1002/jps.2600600832. PMID 5127101.
- ↑ Waller, Coy W. (December 1971). "Chemistry of marihuana". Pharmacological Reviews. 23 (4): 365–371. doi:10.1016/S0031-6997(25)06891-7.
- ↑ Schultes, Richard Evans (June 1984). "Marihuana. An annotated bibliography". Book review. Journal of Ethnopharmacology. 11 (1): 120–121. doi:10.1016/0378-8741(84)90102-8.
- ↑ Rossell, Debbie (27 April 1998). "UM pharmacy professor Coy Waller mourned". University of Mississippi News. University of Mississippi. 8180. Retrieved 12 October 2026.
- ↑ "Lecture series". School of Pharmacy, University of Mississippi. Archived from the original on 2 May 2024. Retrieved 12 October 2026.