Paul Octave Wiehe was a Mauritian botanist born on 21 October 1910.
Wiehe attended the Mauritius College of Agriculture where he graduated with Honors and obtained a scholarship in 1930 to study at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London where he obtained a degree in Botany with First Class Honours and became an Associate of the Royal College of Science.
In 1936, he returned to Mauritius and worked as a teacher at the Royal College of Curepipe. In 1938, Wiehe was employed by the Colonial Agricultural Services as a Plant Pathologist in the Department of Agriculture and as a teacher of Botany at the Mauritius Agricultural College. He was also the editor of the Revue Agricole de l’Ile Maurice.
As from 1941, Octave Wiehe; alongside with R.E Vaughan, researched on the declining native vegetation of Mauritius and published their findings in the Journal of Ecology and in the publications of the Linnean Society of London. As a result of their work, the Ancient Monuments and National Reserves Board were set up n 1944, to initiate conservation programmes for endemic species of Mauritius. During the WW2 period, Wiehe played a major role in the development of sustainable agriculture in order to cater for the needs of Mauritius.
In 1948, Octave Wiehe was transferred to Nyasaland (Malawi). He occupied the post of Pathologist and successfully diagnosed diseases that were afflicting the commercial Indian Walnut Aleurites moluccanus. Wiehe went to British Guyana in 1951 to investigate and identify the threat of “Leaf scald” to the sugar industry.
Octave Wiehe was appointed as the first director of the Mauritius Sugar Industry Research Institute (MSIRI) in 1953. The institution grew up to become a world leading research organisation and hosted the 11th Congress of the International Society of Sugar Cane Technologists (ISSCT) in 1962 and was Chairman of the Congress.
Octave Wiehe was awarded the M.Sc. in 1945 and the D.Sc. from London University in 1945 and 1957, respectively. He was conferred the title of Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1958 in recognition of his scientific achievements and his leadership at the helm of the MSIRI.
From 1968 to 1973 Wiehe was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Mauritius, where the Paul Octave Wiehe Auditorium was named in his honour in 1975.
Octave Wiehe was an avid horticulturist who tendered to a great collection of orchids. Amongst the plants that he introduced in Maurius are the Mantali (Terminalia mantaly), the Snow of Kilimanjaro (Euphorbia Jeucocephala), the two heconias (Heconia rostrata et Heconia latispata) and some 60 varieties of Hibiscus from Hawaii.
Pandanus wiehei (Bosser & J.Guého) and Panicum wiehei (Renvoize) are named in Wiehe’s honour.
Paul Octave Wiehe’s name was inscribed on the Obelisk Lienard in 1979.