Lyman Bradford Smith (September 11, 1904 – May 4, 1997) was an American

botanist Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

. Smith was born in

Winchester Winchester (, ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government Districts of England, district, at the western end of the South Downs N ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

. He studied botany during the 1920s at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

and received his PhD from Harvard in 1930. Between 1928 and 1929, he worked for the first time in Brazil. Most of his life's work came to involve the taxonomy of the flowering plants of South America, in particular the bromeliads (''

Bromeliaceae The Bromeliaceae (the bromeliads) are a family of monocot flowering plants of about 80 genera and 3700 known species, native mainly to the tropical Americas, with several species found in the American subtropics and one in tropical west Africa, ...

''). Smith worked on the Bromeliaceae for the North American Flora published by the American botanist

Nathaniel Lord Britton Nathaniel Lord Britton (1859 – 1934) was an American botanist and taxonomist who co-founded the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, New York (state), New York. Early life Britton was born on the 15 of January 1859 at New Dorp, Staten Island ...

, volume 19, no. 2 (1938). Smith was a world authority on '' Begoniaceae'' and also worked with ''

Velloziaceae Velloziaceae is a family of monocotyledonous flowering plants. The APG II system, of 2003 (unchanged from the APG system, 1998), also recognizes this family, and assigns it to the order Pandanales. Relationships and evolution By contrast to oth ...

'' and numerous other plant families. He was a curator in the Smithsonian Institution's Department of Botany from 1947 until his retirement in 1974, but continued to work in the United States National Herbarium as an emeritus curator almost until his death in

Manhattan, Kansas Manhattan is a city in and the county seat of Riley County, Kansas, United States, although the city extends into Pottawatomie County, Kansas, Pottawatomie County. It is located in northeastern Kansas at the junction of the Kansas River and Big ...

, in 1997.

Works

:''This list may be incomplete.'' * ''The Bromeliaceae of Brazil'', 1955 * ''The Bromeliaceae of Colombia'', 1957 * ''Begoniaceae'', 1986

References

*Biography

* Taxon, Vol. 46(4) (1997): 819–824. * Robert Zander, Fritz Encke, Günther Buchheim, Siegmund Seybold (editor): Handwörterbuch der Pflanzennamen. 13th ed. Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart 1984, .

External links

List of plants described by Lyman Bradford Smith (IPNI)Lyman Bradford Smith Papers
from the

Smithsonian Institution Archives Smithsonian Libraries and Archives is an institutional archives and library system comprising 21 branch libraries serving the various Smithsonian Institution museums and research centers. The Libraries and Archives serve Smithsonian Institution ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Lyman Bradford 1904 births 1997 deaths Botanists with author abbreviations Botanists active in South America Harvard University alumni Smithsonian Institution people People from Winchester, Massachusetts 20th-century American botanists