Hannah Caroline Aase

Hannah Caroline Aase (12 July 1883 – 23 November 1980^[1]) was a botanist and cytologist.

Career

Aase received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of South Dakota in 1906 and a graduate degree from South Dakota State College in 1928.^[2][3][4] In 1915, she received a PhD from the University of Chicago.^[5] In her 1915 dissertation, she studied the vascular anatomy of the megasporophylls of conifers. She found that plants in the Coniferales family generally reduce the number of sporophylls in the strobilus and modifying a compound sporophyll appears later in disguised forms but loses one of the sporophyll members.^[5]

She became an instructor of botany at State College of Washington in 1914 and taught morphology.^[6] She was a member of faculty until 1949 and the first Emeritus Professor.^[7] She later studied the heredity of cereal grains. She crossed wheat and wild relatives in the 1930s and seems to have wanted to understand the ancestry of wheat, unfortunately, much of her work has been lost.^[8][9] She often co-authored papers on Allium aaseae, Aase's Onion, with Marion Ownbey, a fellow faculty member of WSU.^[10]

After her retirement, she continued in the field by reading technical journals. Washington State University has honored her legacy with the Aase Fellowship in Botany which used in the recruitment of new graduate students.^[7]

The standard author abbreviation Aase is used to indicate this individual as the author when citing a botanical name.^[11]

Eponyms

Allium aaseae - Aase's Onion

Selected publications

Books

• Aase, Hannah Caroline. Vascular Anatomy of the Megasporophylls of Conifers (1915). The Botanical Gazette^[5]
• Aase, Hannah Caroline and Gaines, Edward Franklin. To haploid wheat plant. Number 6 of Contribution (1926). State College of Washington. Dept. of Botany. Edition reimpresa of College of Agriculture and Exp. Sta. 13 pp.
• Aase, Hannah Caroline. Cytology of Triticum, Secale, and Aegilops hybrids, with reference to phylogeny (1930). Editor State College of Washington, 60 pp.
• Aase, Hannah Caroline and Ownbey, Francis Marion. Cytotaxonomic studies in Allium (1955). Number 1-3 of Research studies of the State College of Washington: Monographic supplement. Editor State College of Washington, 106 pp.^[12]

References

1. Hannah Caroline Aase (1883 - 1980) - Find A Grave Memorial
2. Education, South Dakota Regents of (1906-01-01). Biennial Report.
3. Washington, State College of (1915-01-01). Annual Catalogue of the State College of Washington. The College.
4. "Washington State University - History of the Marion Ownbey Herbarium". sbs.wsu.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-19.
5. Aase, Hannah Caroline (1915-01-01). Vascular Anatomy of the Megasporophylls of Conifers. University of Chicago.
6. Catalog of the State College of Washington. 1913.
7. "School of Biological Sciences Graduate Student Handbook" (PDF). December 9, 2014. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
8. "Full Circle :: Summer 2004 :: Washington State Magazine". wsm.wsu.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-19.
9. Robbins, Jim (2007-06-05). "A Perennial Search for Perfect Wheat". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2015-11-19.
10. "Washington State University - Biography of Marion Ownbey". sbs.wsu.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-19.
11. "Author Query for 'Aase'". International Plant Names Index.
12. Ownbey, Francis Marion; Aase, Hannah Caroline (1955-01-01). Cytotaxonomic Studies in Allium. State College of Washington.