Johan Gerard ten Houten

In 1971 he was appointed extraordinarius (Extraordinary Professor) of Environmental Science at Wageningen Agricultural University, where he remained until retiring on September 1, 1976. By the end of his life he had received an honorary doctorate from the State Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Ghent University, Belgium; and was made an Officer of both the Order of Orange-Nassau and of the Order of the Crown of Belgium.

Soon thereafter the ten Houten created the Instituut voor Plantenziektenkundig Onderzoek (IPO) (Research Institute for Plant Protection) in Wageningen and on September 1, 1949 the board appointed him as its director. There he continued to work until 1974. For the first decade he was also a researcher, especially on Phytophthora, including Phytophthora cactorum. His research also extended to the social and economic benefits of pest control during this time.

After graduation he worked in applied entomology at the Colonial Institute in Amsterdam (now called the Royal Tropical Institute) and then starting at the end of 1939 at the company NV Javo. At NV Javo he was involved mostly with pest and disease control in Roselle grown as a fiber crop on Java, Indonesia. In 1946 he was hired as head of the Biocide Department at Royal Dutch Shell's laboratories in Amsterdam. From 1951-1957 he was President of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Plantenziektekundige (Royal Netherlands Society of Plant Pathology).

His father had been interested in biology and J. G. also pursued that interest, joining the Nederlandse Jeugdbond voor Natuurstudie (Netherlands' Young Naturalists League). He went on the study biology at the University of Utrecht, graduating with a degree in plant taxonomy in 1935 with a minor in plant pathology. At the time of his graduation, jobs in biology were scarce and so he took a job at the Dutch pharmaceutical company Brocades. He then began a doctoral program at UU under Johanna Westerdijk, which he completed in 1939 with a dissertation titled Seed Plant Diseases of Conifers.

J. G. ten Houten (17 April 1911, in Winterswijk – 15 May 1993, in Wageningen) was a Dutch plant pathologist known for founding and leading several important bodies in that subject in the Netherlands.