Ernst Leibacher’s interest in agriculture inspired him to explore Southern California from the Los Angeles suburbs to Riverside County. Born in Switzerland, Leibacher grew up in Inglewood, a city southwest of Los Angeles where he twice served as student body president of his high school and began serving on the city council in 1934 at the age of 24. Married to Helen, also a Swiss immigrant, Leibacher spent his career working in government and the couple was active in local arts organizations.
Leibacher started growing citrus and avocado while living in Pico Rivera, a city east of Los Angeles that now has an avenue named for him. As more people moved into suburbs, Leibacher relocated his groves further east, buying property in the late 1950s 70 miles away in Sun City (now part of the Riverside County city of Menifee) where his interest in growing things could truly flourish. On a trip to Cleveland, Ernst treated family members to a sampling of his avocados, which were “pretty exotic plants in those days,” John Leibacher, the couple’s nephew, recalled.
“This is what the Leibachers have done for me, to empower me to find exciting data that, hopefully, will change the path of drug discovery using plants as a platform.”
It was through the Sun City land purchase that the Leibachers developed a relationship with UCR. “Ernst got some very good advice and had a continuing relationship with the agricultural outreach services of UC Riverside, and they helped him in a very substantial way,” John Leibacher said. “He felt a debt for the knowledge that they had shared with him and so he wanted to acknowledge the university.”
The Leibachers made that acknowledgement by gifting the Sun City land to UCR in 1999, designating that proceeds from its sale be used to fund the Ernst and Helen Leibacher Endowed Chair in Botany and Plant Sciences. The chair facilitates research that sustains and strengthens the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences. “Both Ernst and I appreciate that something good can be done with the grove,” Helen said at the time of the gift.
In 2002, two years after Ernst passed away, Natasha Raikhel, distinguished professor of plant cell biology, emerita, became the inaugural Leibacher Chair (Helen passed away in 2005). As founder and director of the Center for Plant Cell Biology (CEPCEB), Raikhel used funds provided by the Leibachers to start initial work on bioinformatics, proteomics, chemical genomics, and advanced microscopy research. “It gave me an opportunity to do something that was new, something that without preliminary data was very difficult to get grants for,” Raikhel, who also served as the director of the Institute for Integrative Genome Biology (IIGB), said of the chair. “Most importantly, it was an opportunity to do a new type of science that I wanted to do.”
Today, Katayoon (Katie) Dehesh, director of the IIGB and distinguished professor of botany and plant sciences, is the Leibacher Chair. Like Raikhel, she has relied on the funding provided by the Leibachers to launch innovative research projects, in the case of her lab investigating stress responses in plant cells, work that could have applications in malaria treatment. “It is very generous of them to invest in scientific endeavors that could open a new horizon, but in order to arrive there, we need the initial support until the funding agencies realize the importance of the work,” she said. “That is what the Leibachers have done for me, to empower me to find exciting data that, hopefully, will change the path of drug discovery using plants as a platform.”
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