Merritt Lyndon Fernald (October 5, 1873 – September 22, 1950) was an American botanist. He was a respected scholar of the

taxonomy Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification. A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...

and phytogeography of the

vascular plant Vascular plants (), also called tracheophytes () or collectively Tracheophyta (), form a large group of land plants ( accepted known species) that have lignified tissues (the xylem) for conducting water and minerals throughout the plant. They al ...

flora of temperate eastern

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

. During his career, Fernald published more than 850 scientific papers and wrote and edited the seventh and eighth editions of ''Gray's Manual of Botany''. Fernald coauthored the book ''Edible Wild Plants of Eastern North America'' in 1919–1920 with

Alfred Kinsey Alfred Charles Kinsey (; June 23, 1894 – August 25, 1956) was an American sexologist, biologist, and professor of entomology and zoology who, in 1947, founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, now known as the Kinsey Instit ...

, which was published in 1943.

Biography

Fernald was born in

Orono, Maine Orono () is a town in Penobscot County, Maine, United States. Located on the Penobscot and Stillwater rivers, it was first settled by American colonists in 1774. They named it in honor of Chief Joseph Orono, a sachem of the indigenous Penobsc ...

. His parents were Mary Lovejoy Heywood and Merritt Caldwell Fernald, a college professor at the

University of Maine The University of Maine (UMaine or UMO) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Orono, Maine. It was established in 1865 as the land-grant college of Maine and is the Flagship universities, flagshi ...

. Fernald attended Orono High School, during which time he decided that he wanted to become a botanist. He collected plants around Orono and published two botanical papers while still attending high school. Fernald attended Maine State College for a year, but began working as an assistant at the Gray Herbarium at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

when he was 17. He began studying at Harvard in 1891, graduated magna cum laude in 1897, and joined the faculty at Harvard, during which time he remained active at the Herbarium. Fernald was awarded the 1940

Leidy Award The Leidy Award is a medal and prize presented by the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (formerly the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. It was named after US palaeontologist Joseph Leidy. T ...

from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. On April 15, 1907, Fernald married Margaret Howard Grant (1875-1957), in Providence, Rhode Island. She was the daughter of Henry Tyler Grant Jr. and Annie M. (Manton) Grant. They had three children: Katherine (1908-1986) Mary (1910-1927) and Henry Grant Fernald (1913-1982). The botanical artist Minna Fernald was a relative.

References

Citations

Other sources

*Stuckey, Ronald L. (2000), ''Fernald, Merritt Lyndon'', In: American National Biography Online,

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

. *

External links

National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir
1873 births 1950 deaths American botanists Harvard University alumni People from Orono, Maine Scientists from Maine {{US-botanist-stub