Robert Harry Stover

Infobox scientist honorific_prefix = name = R. H. Stover honorific_suffix = native_name = native_name_lang = image = image_size = image_upright =

caption = birth_name = birth_date = birth_place = Chatham, Ontario, Canada death_date = death_place = La Lima, Honduras death_cause = resting_place = resting_place_coordinates = other_names = siglum = pronounce = fields = phytopathology, economic botany, economic mycology workplaces = Canadian Department of Agriculture in Harrow, Ontario; Garrett lab, Cambridge Botany School; thesis_url = thesis_year = 1950 doctoral_advisor = D. L. Bailey

Stover graduated from University of Guelph with a B.S. in agricultural bacteriology in 1947, from 1949 to 1951 a phytopathologist for the Canadian Department of Agriculture in Harrow, Ontario, specifically being head of their investigations of tobacco diseases. During the winters of those years he was a graduate student of D. L. Bailey at University of Toronto, and in 1950 he received a PhD in phytopathology and mycology. He moved the next year to La Lima, Honduras, to work for United Fruit on Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense/Panama disease. During this time Stover became interested in Mycosphaerella musicola/Sigatoka leaf spot, and then its congener M. fijiensis/black sigatoka when it arrived in the Americas. Briefly in 1969 and 1970 he was on the governing board of the College of Agricultural Science Professionals of Honduras and was one of the founding members of the board of trustees of the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain, part of CGIAR.

In 2001 FHIA's library was renamed the Robert H. Stover Library in his honor.

For the rest of his life he remained an active member of APS, the Canadian Phytopathological Society, the AAAS, COLPROCAH, and ACORBAT, and died on February 25, 2003, near his adopted home of 52 years, La Lima.

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