Our foundation bears the initials of Jacob Richard Schramm, an American botanist and the founding editor of Biological Abstracts, a scientific abstracting publication established in 1925 with a $375,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. Biological Abstracts later became the nonprofit publisher BIOSIS, and was sold to Thomson Scientific (now Thomson Reuters) in 2004. We used the proceeds from this sale to establish the JRS Biodiversity Foundation in 2007.

Our roots reside in both a mission of access to biological information, and in the creative risk-taking of a private U.S. foundation. We honor our legacy by continuing to enhance the knowledge of biodiversity through grant-making and advocacy. We also extend it by supporting partners to put this knowledge into the hands of decision-makers who influence biodiversity conservation and sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa, a region with extraordinary biodiversity that is gravely threatened by the pressures of climate change and human influences.

The JRS Biodiversity Foundation is grateful that our history has been honored in the naming of two species:

Dunama biosise, a moth found in Costa Rica (doi:10.3897/zookeys.264.4440) whose description was made possible, in part, by JRS.

Philine schrammi, a gastropod found in the waters of the West African continental shelf (doi: 10.1111/zoj.12478) whose description was made possible, in part, by JRS.