William Mitten (30 November 1819 – 20 July 1906), was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

pharmaceutical chemist and authority on bryophytes who has been called "the premier bryologist of the second half of the nineteenth century". He built up a collection of some 50,000 specimens of bryophytes ( mosses,

lichens A lichen ( , ) is a composite organism that arises from algae or cyanobacteria living among filaments of multiple fungi species in a mutualistic relationship.liverworts) at his birthplace and home in

Hurstpierpoint Hurstpierpoint is a village in West Sussex, England, southwest of Burgess Hill, and west of Hassocks railway station. It sits in the civil parish of Hurstpierpoint and Sayers Common which has an area of 2029.88 ha and a population ...

, Sussex. The collection was largely made up of specimens collected around the world by other collectors and is now at the

New York Botanical Garden The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) is a botanical garden at Bronx Park in the Bronx, New York City. Established in 1891, it is located on a site that contains a landscape with over one million living plants; the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, ...

, having been purchased after his death. These collectors included Richard Spruce and also Alfred Russel Wallace, who became Mitten's son-in-law in 1866. He had four daughters: Annie, the eldest, was the only one to marry; another, Flora, provided assistance in compiling notes for William Edward Nicholson to write a sketch with bibliography on her father.

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* * English botanists 1819 births 1906 deaths {{England-scientist-stub