Alice Eastwood

Alice Eastwood (born 19 January 1859 in Toronto, † October 30, 1953 in San Francisco) was an American botanist Canadian descent. Your official botanical author abbreviation is " Eastw. ".

Life and work

Alice Eastwood was the daughter of the shop owner Colin Skinner Eastwood and Eliza Jane Gowdey Eastwood. Her mother died when she was six years old. They lived for a time with an uncle, who aroused the interest of Botany at her. 1873 she moved to her father to Denver and graduated in 1879 their education at Denver East High School from where she taught as a teacher for the next ten years.

1881 she accompanied Alfred Russel Wallace in the Rocky Mountains and learned this year also know Asa Gray. With the help of his A Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States and John Merle Coulter's Manual of Rocky Mountain Botany, she studied for ten years the flora of Colorado.

1890, she toured the East Coast of the United States and a year later, Southern California, where she met Katharine and Townshend Stith Brandegee. In the winter of 1891/1892 she worked for several months as assistant to the herbarium of the California Academy of Sciences in 1892 and moved finally to San Francisco. At the California Academy of Sciences in 1884, she was, after Katherine Brandegee had gone into retirement, curator and director of the Department of Botany.

In 1906 she was able to save the type collection of the herbarium before the outbreak of fires, which they had kept, contrary to the then customary practice, separated from the rest of the collection during the severe earthquake in San Francisco. The following six years in which the Academy was rebuilt, she spent in a number of herbaria in Europe and the USA, so the Gray Herbarium, the New York Botanical Garden, where the British Museum in London and the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew.

After the restoration of the buildings and facilities of the Academy at Golden Gate Park in 1912, it was dedicated to the reconstruction of the destroyed collection. To this end, they made ​​numerous trips to the western U.S. states, including Alaska, Arizona, Utah and Idaho.

In 1949 she retired from her post as curator back. Alice Eastwood remained unmarried and died at the age of 94 years.

Ehrentaxa

Townshend Stith Brandegee named in her honor the genus Eastwoodia plant sunflower family ( Asteraceae). August Brand named after her Aliciella genus of the plant family of the barrier cabbage family ( Polemoniaceae ). Gustaf iron named after her the earthworm Mesenchytraeus eastwoodi (iron 1904).

Writings

Alice Eastwood has published over 300 articles and reviews in a variety of magazines. She was editor of the magazine Zoe ( since 1891 ) and co-editor of Erythea. Together with John Thomas Howell (1903-1994), she published from 1932, Leaflets of Western Botany.

Swell

• Keir Brooks Sterling, Lorne F. Hammond: Biographical Dictionary of American and Canadian Naturalists. 1997, pp. 235-236. ISBN 0313230471