Paul Arnold Fryxell was an American botanist known for his work on flowering plants, especially those within the

Malvaceae Malvaceae, or the mallows, is a family of flowering plants estimated to contain 244 genera with 4225 known species. Well-known members of economic importance include okra, cotton, cacao and durian. There are also some genera containing familiar ...

Education and career

Fryxell attended Moline public schools and later Augustana College, graduating with a B.A. in 1949, and

Iowa State University Iowa State University of Science and Technology (Iowa State University, Iowa State, or ISU) is a public land-grant research university in Ames, Iowa. Founded in 1858 as the Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm, Iowa State became one of the ...

(M.S., 1951, Ph.D., 1955). After employment with the New Mexico Agricultural Experiment Station (1952–1955) and the

Wichita State University Wichita State University (WSU) is a public research university in Wichita, Kansas, United States. It is governed by the Kansas Board of Regents. The university offers more than 60 undergraduate degree programs in more than 200 areas of study in ...

(Asst. Professor of Botany, 1955–1957), he joined the Agricultural Research Service,

USDA The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, and food. It aims to meet the needs of com ...

, with which agency he spent most of his career as a Research Botanist, located on the

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...

campus. He retired from this position in 1994 and became Adjunct Professor in Integrative Biology at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...

. He was also an Honorary Curator 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, ...

Research

His research interests have centered on 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. ...

of the Neotropical Malvaceae, including work on the

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

biodiversity Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic (''genetic variability''), species (''species diversity''), and ecosystem (''ecosystem diversity'') l ...

, and taxonomy of

Gossypium ''Gossypium'' () is a genus of flowering plants in the tribe Gossypieae of the mallow family, Malvaceae, from which cotton is harvested. It is native to tropical and subtropical regions of the Old and New Worlds. There are about 50 ''Gossypium ...

, the genus that includes the world's

cotton Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor pe ...

crop. He served as president of the

American Society of Plant Taxonomists The American Society of Plant Taxonomists (ASPT) is a botanical organization formed in 1935 to "foster, encourage, and promote education and research in the field of plant taxonomy, to include those areas and fields of study that contribute to and b ...

(1983–1984) and of the

Society for Economic Botany The Society for Economic Botany is an international learned society covering the field of economic botany. It was established in 1959. Its official journal is ''Economic Botany'', published on their behalf by Springer Science+Business Media Spr ...

(1988–1989), and held a Fulbright Scholar Award for study in

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

(1993). In 1961 he was a elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was also a fellow of the Texas Academy of Science and a member of the Commission of Flora Neotropica. He was a contributor of treatments of the Malvaceae to numerous Neotropical floristic works and conducted fieldwork in the

neotropics The Neotropical realm is one of the eight biogeographic realms constituting Earth's land surface. Physically, it includes the tropical terrestrial ecoregions of the Americas and the entire South American temperate zone. Definition In bioge ...

, primarily in

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

but also in parts of Central and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...

, as well as in tropical Australia. In 1974, he was honoured by botanist David Martin Bates, (1934-2019), who named a

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispe ...

genus of plants after him, '' Fryxellia'' (belonging to the family

), comes from Mexico and Texas.

Selected publications

* * * *

Personal life

His wife Greta (Albrecht) Fryxell was an oceanographer known for her research on diatoms.

Education and career

Research

Selected publications

Personal life

References

See also