Michael Jeffrey Balick

Michael Jeffrey Balick (born 1952) is an American ethnobotanist, economic botanist, and pharmacognosist, known as a leading expert on medicinal and toxic plants, biocultural conservation and the plant family Arecaceae (palms). New York University, and Yale University.

Balick has worked in ethnobotany and ethnomedicine in remote areas of the tropics with people of indigenous cultures, as well as in New York City with people having traditional herbal knowledge From 1974 to 1975 he lived in Costa Rica and helped build the Wilson Botanical Garden at the Las Cruces Biological Station. From 1975 to 1997 he was a frequent researcher in Amazonia, where he studied palms and their local uses. He has done research and taught university courses in "ethnobotany and ethnomedicine, phytochemistry, floristics and conservation biology."

Balick is the author or co-author of more than 160 scientific articles or book chapters. He is also the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of thirty books and monographs, varied among scientific and general interest. and in 2004 received the AAAS International Award for Scientific Cooperation. In 2018 he received the David Fairchild Medal for Plant Exploration of the National Tropical Botanical Garden and in 2020 the H. Marc Cathey Award for outstanding scientific research that has enriched horticulture and plant science from the American Horticultural Society. He is a founding member of the Daylight Academy, a scientific academy based in Zurich, Switzerland. For the academic year 2005-2006 he was a Guggenheim Fellow. He was the president of the Society for Economic Botany in 1992 and in 2009 was a recipient of the Society's Distinguished Economic Botanist award.

Dahmer, S.; Balick, Michael J.; Hillmann-Kitalong, Ann, et al. (2018). Palau Primary Health Care Manual: Health Care in Palau, Combining Conventional Treatments and Traditional Uses of Plants for Health and Healing. The New York Botanical Garden, Ministry of Health, Republic of Palau, Belau National Museum. Nelson, L.S.; Balick, Michael J. (2020). Handbook of Poisonous and Injurious Plants, Third Edition. Springer Science and Business Media, New York Botanical Garden. . Balick, Michael J.; Hillmann-Kitalong, Ann (2020). Ethnobotany of Palau: Plants, People and Island Culture, Volume 1. Belau National Museum/The New York Botanical Garden. . Balick, Michael J.; Hillmann-Kitalong, Ann (2020). Ethnobotany of Palau: Plants, People and Island Culture, Volume 2. Belau National Museum/The New York Botanical Garden. . Balick, Michael J.; Cox, Paul Alan (2020) Plants, People and Culture: The Science of Ethnobotany, 2nd Edition. Taylor and Francis Group/CRC Press. .