Elmer Drew Merrill
Elmer Drew Merrill (* October 15 1876 in Auburn ( Maine), † February 25, 1956 in Forest Hills, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts) was an American botanist and longtime director of the Arnold Arboretum. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Merr. " .
Life and work
1898 Merrill received his Bachelor of Science from the University of Maine. 1899 to 1902 he was an assistant at the U.S. Department of Agriculture ( USDA). From 1900 to 1901 he studied medicine at George Washington University. In 1904 he graduated from the University of Maine with a Master.
Merrill was 1902-1923 botanist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA ) and other governmental and educational institutions in the Philippines. In 1912 he published his work A flora of Manila. 1922 to 1926 was followed by his four -volume work on Enumeration of Philippine Flowering Plants.
1923 Merrill was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. 1923-1929 worked at the University of California in Berkeley, California. 1925, the University of Maine awarded him an honorary doctorate.
1930 to 1935 he was professor of botany at Columbia University and director of the New York Botanical Garden. In 1931 he founded the magazine Britonnia, for which he was editor until 1935.
In 1934 he became president of the Botanical Society of America. The following year, 1935, he was a professor of botany at Harvard University. From 1935 to 1946 he was Director of the connected to the Harvard University Arnold Arboretum.
1936 and 1950 he was president of the Section on Nomenclature at the International Botanical Congress, 1946, he was president of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists.
In 1938 he published together with the EH Walker Bibliography of Eastern Asiatic Botany. His work Plant Life of the Pacific World, he published 1945. 1954 he published his book The Botany of Cook's Voyages and Its Unexpected Significance in Relation to Anthropology, Biogeography, and History in the Chronica Botanica.
On February 25, 1956 Merrill died in Forest Hills, Massachusetts.
After Merrill named taxa
In his honor, the plant genera were
- Elmerrillia Dandy of the family Magnoliaceae ( Magnoliaceae )
- Merrillanthus Chun & Tsiang the family of milkweed plants ( Asclepiadaceae )
- Merrillia Sweingle of the rue family ( Rutaceae )
- Merrilliopanax HLLi the family Araliaceae ( Araliaceae )
Named.
The Christmas Palm ( Adonidia merrillii ( Becc. ) Becc. ) Is named after him.
Swell
- Robert Zander, Fritz Encke, Günther Buchheim, Siegmund Seybold (eds.): Handbook of Plant Names. 13th edition. Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-8001-5042-5.