Merritt Lyndon Fernald

Merritt Lyndon Fernald

Merritt Lyndon Fernald (October 5, 1873 - September 22, 1950) was an American botanist. In his time he was regarded as the most respected scholar of the taxonomy and phytogeography of the vascular plant flora of temperate eastern North America. He published more than 850 scientific papers and wrote and edited the seventh and eighth editions of Gray's Manual of Botany. Fernald also wrote a book Edible Wild Plants of Eastern North America in 1919-1920 with Alfred Kinsey, published in 1943.^[1][2]

Biography

Fernald was born in Orono, Maine, his father was Merritt Caldwell Fernald, a college professor at the University of Maine, and his mother was Mary Lovejoy Heywood. He attended Orono High School, during high school he decided that he wanted to become a botanist, he collected plants around Orono and had two botanical papers published while still at high school. He attended Maine State College for a year, but at age 17 was invited to work as an assistant at the Gray Herbarium at Harvard University. He began studying at Harvard in 1891 and graduated in 1897, then he joined the faculty as a teacher and also remained working at the Herbarium.

He was awarded the 1940 Leidy Award from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.^[3]

References

Citations

1. Gray, Asa (1908) [1847]. Benjamin Lincoln Robinson and Merritt Lyndon Fernald, ed. Gray's New Manual of Botany: A Handbook of the Flowering Plants and Ferns of the Central and Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada (Seventh edition - Illustrated ed.). New York: American Book Company. p. 59. Retrieved 2008-07-30.
2. Del Tredici, Peter. "The Other Kinsey Report", Natural History, ISSN 0028-0712, July 1, 2006, Vol. 115, Issue 6.
3. "The Four Awards Bestowed by The Academy of Natural Sciences and Their Recipients". Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia) 156 (1): 403–404. June 2007. doi:10.1635/0097-3157(2007)156[403:TFABBT]2.0.CO;2.
4. "Author Query for 'Fernald'". International Plant Names Index.

Other sources

• Stuckey, Ronald L. (2000), Fernald, Merritt Lyndon, In: American National Biography Online, Oxford University Press.
• Ewan, Joseph (1970–80). "Fernald, Merritt Lyndon". Dictionary of Scientific Biography 4. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 583–4. ISBN 978-0-684-10114-9.

External links

• National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir