Jan-Just Bos

Jan-Just Bos

Personal information
Birth name	Jan Justus Bos
Born	28 July 1939 Balikpapan, Dutch East Indies
Died	24 March 2003 (aged 63) Oosterbeek, the Netherlands
Alma mater	Wageningen University
Height	1.68 m (5 ft 6 in)
Weight	49 kg (108 lb)
Sport
Sport	Rowing
Club	Argo, Wageningen
Medal record Men's rowing Representing the Netherlands Olympic Games 1964 Tokyo Coxed pair

Jan Justus "Jan-Just" Bos (28 July 1939 – 24 March 2003) was a Dutch botanist, television presenter, and rower who competed in the 1960 and 1964 Summer Olympics.

Bos (Dutch for "forest") studied forestry at the Wageningen University. While a student in Wageningen, he was the coxwain of the Dutch coxed pair, which was eliminated in the repechage at the 1960 Olympics. Four years later he won a bronze medal in the same event, together with Erik Hartsuiker and Herman Rouwé.

From 1968 on he worked at his Wageningen University, becoming a faculty member of the department of plant systematics. He specialized in the flora of Sub-Saharan Africa and spent six years in South Africa, Liberia, Cameroon, and Ethiopia where he collected over 10,000 plants. In 1984 he defended a PhD on a study of the plants of the genus Dracaena in West Africa. In 1985 he led an expedition to Gabon.

In the 1980s he was a presenter for the Dutch nature television series Ja, natuurlijk ("Yes, naturally").

References

Herman Rouwé, Erik Hartsuiker and Jan-Just Bos in 1964