Donovan "Don" Stewart Correll (13 April 1908,
Wilson, North Carolina
Wilson is a city in and the county seat of Wilson County, North Carolina, United States. Located approximately east of the capital city of Raleigh, it is served by the interchange of Interstate 95 and U.S. Route 264. Wilson had an estimated p ...
– 28 March 1983,
Miami, Florida
Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...
) was an American botanist, plant collector, and plant taxonomist, specializing in
orchid
Orchids are plants that belong to the family Orchidaceae (), a diverse and widespread group of flowering plants with blooms that are often colourful and fragrant.
Along with the Asteraceae, they are one of the two largest families of flowering ...
s.
Biography
Correll grew up in North Carolina. For two years, before entering college, he took voice lessons and sang solos in church and on radio. He also spent a year doing various jobs in Florida. At Duke University, he graduated with A.B. in 1934, A.M. in 1936, and Ph.D. in 1939. Some of his doctoral work was done at Harvard University, where he worked under the orchidologist
Oakes Ames, who introduced him to
economic botany
''Economic Botany'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal that covers all aspects of economic botany. The editor-in-chief is Robert A. Voeks (California State University, Fullerton). The journal was established in 1947 and is published b ...
. At Harvard, Correll was financially assisted by the Anna C. Ames Memorial Scholarship.
In 1937 he married Helen Elizabeth Butts (1907–2000).
She received her Ph.D. in zoology from Duke University in 1934. She worked extensively on botany with her husband and became an expert on grasses and sedges.
He was from 1939 to 1943 a research associate at the
Harvard University Botanical Museum. In 1943 he also worked as a botanist for the
United States Department of Agriculture
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the United States federal executive departments, federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, ...
(USDA) on the Alaska Highway Botanical-Geological Survey, which was connected with the