Edward Tuckerman

Edward Tuckerman ( born December 7, 1817 in Boston, † March 15, 1886 in Amherst, Massachusetts ) was an American botanist and lichen -watchers. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Tuck. ".

Life

He was born in 1817 as son of the Boston merchant Edward Tuckerman and his wife Sophie ( May ) Tuckerman. He attended the Boston Latin School, then the Union College in Schenectady (BA 1837). He then studied law at the Harvard Law School ( LLM B. 1839). Even after graduating, he remained at Cambridge and visited, among other courses at the Harvard Divinity School. 1841-42 he undertook an educational trip to Germany and Sweden. After his return, he studied again at Union College (MA 1844), then again at Harvard (AB 1847), and wrote to then turn at Harvard Divinity School, which, however, he eventually left without a degree.

In 1854 he married Sarah Eliza Sigourney Cushing in Boston and moved with her ​​finally to Amherst, where he lived until his death. From 1854 he was at Amherst College history lectures and was there since then Full Professor of eastern history. However, he was particularly interested in botany, and from 1858 until his death he held the chair in this subject. In 1868, he was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences.

Its main merit is the study of lichens in North America. His field research he conducted in New England, mostly on the slopes of Mount Washington, where, after his death, a mountain valley, the Tuckerman Ravine was named after him. He also took the progressive development of the American West through the expansion of the railway network utilized by herbarium specimens he let himself get even from remote parts of the country.