John Bartram was an American botanist, horticulturist, and explorer, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for most of his career. Swedish botanist and taxonomist Carl Linnaeus said he was the "greatest natural botanist in the world." Bartram corresponded with and shared North American plants and seeds with a variety of scientists in England and Europe.
John Torrey was an American botanist, chemist, and physician. Throughout much of his career, he was a teacher of chemistry, often at multiple universities, while he also pursued botanical work, focusing on the flora of North America. His most renowned works include studies of the New York flora, the Mexican Boundary, the Pacific railroad surveys, and the uncompleted Flora of North America.
Sir James Edward Smith was an English botanist and founder of the Linnean Society.
Johann Jacob Dillen Dillenius was a German botanist. He is known for his Hortus Elthamensis on the rare plants around Eltham, London, and for his Historia muscorum, a natural history of lower plants including mosses, liverworts, hornworts, lycopods, algae, lichens and fungi.
William Gambel was an American naturalist, ornithologist, and botanist from Philadelphia. As a young man he worked closely with the renowned naturalist Thomas Nuttall. At the age of eighteen he traveled overland to California, becoming the first botanist to collect specimens in Santa Fe, New Mexico and parts of California.
Benjamin Smith Barton was an American botanist, naturalist, and physician. He was one of the first professors of natural history in the United States and built the largest collection of botanical specimens in the country. He wrote the first American textbook on botany.
Edward Tuckerman was an American botanist and professor who made significant contributions to the study of lichens and other alpine plants. He was a founding member of the Natural History Society of Boston and most of his career was spent at Amherst College. He did the majority of his collecting on the slopes of Mount Washington in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Tuckerman Ravine was named in his honor. The standard botanical author abbreviation Tuck. is applied to species he described.
Haemodoraceae is a family of perennial herbaceous flowering plants with 14 genera and 102 known species. It is sometimes known as the "bloodroot family". Primarily a Southern Hemisphere family, they are found in South Africa, Australia and New Guinea, and in the Americas. Perhaps the best known are the widely cultivated and unusual kangaroo paws from Australia, of the two closely related genera Anigozanthos and Macropidia.
Erik Acharius was a Swedish botanist who pioneered the taxonomy of lichens and is known as the "father of lichenology." Acharius was famously the last pupil of Carl Linnaeus.
Johann Müller was a Swiss botanist who was a specialist in lichens. He published under the name Johannes Müller Argoviensis to distinguish himself from other naturalists with similar names.
Lewis David de Schweinitz was a German-American botanist and mycologist from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Considered the "Father of North American Mycology," he also made significant contributions to botany.
Ellen Hutchins (1785–1815) was an early Irish botanist. She specialised in seaweeds, lichens, mosses and liverworts. She is known for finding many plants new to science, identifying hundreds of species, and for her botanical illustrations in contemporary publications. Many plants were named after her by botanists of the day.
William Darlington was an American physician, botanist, and politician who served as a Democratic-Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Pennsylvania's 2nd congressional district from 1819 to 1823.
Witmer Stone was an American ornithologist, botanist, and mammalogist, and was considered one of the last of the “great naturalists.” Stone is remembered principally as an ornithologist. He was president of the American Ornithologists’ Union (AOU) 1920–23, and was editor of the AOU's periodical The Auk 1912–1936. He spearheaded the production of the 4th edition of the AOU checklist, published in 1931. He worked for over 50 years in the Ornithology Department at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, eventually serving as Director of the institution. Stone was one of the founding members of the Delaware Valley Ornithological Club (DVOC) in 1890 and was actively involved in the organization for the remainder of his life. Stone was one of only two scientists to serve as president of both the AOU and the American Society of Mammalogists, and he co-authored two popular books about mammals. His outstanding botanical contribution was The Plants of Southern New Jersey, published in 1911. Stone spent many summers at Cape May, New Jersey, summering there annually starting in 1916. He is best remembered for his two-volume classic Bird Studies at Old Cape May, which was published by the DVOC in 1937, two years before his death.
William Baldwin was an American physician and botanist who is today remembered for his significant contributions to botanical studies, especially Cyperaceae. He lived in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Georgia, and served as a ship's surgeon on two voyages overseas. He published only two scientific papers, but his major contributions were in the knowledge that he imparted to other botanists in his letters to them and in the thousands of specimens that he provided for their herbaria. He wrote letters to Henry Muhlenberg, Stephen Elliott, William Darlington, Zaccheus Collins, and others. His most important collections were from Georgia, Florida, and eastern South America. When he died, he left a large herbarium that proved to be of great value, especially to Lewis David von Schweinitz, John Torrey, and Asa Gray. He had a special interest in the plant family Cyperaceae and his incomplete, unpublished manuscripts were a major source for monographs by John Torrey and Asa Gray. The historian Joseph Ewan has said that "Baldwin's treatment of a number of genera, especially in the Cyperaceae, showed penetrating observation, understanding, and diagnosis". The genus Balduina was named for him by Thomas Nuttall. Most of what we know of him is from the biography written by his friend, William Darlington, in 1843.
Charles Wilkins Short was an American botanist. He primarily worked in the state of Kentucky. Short discovered several species of plants and has six species of plants named after him. He attended Transylvania University and the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to being a botanist, he practiced medicine and taught materia medica. Short also owned a sizable herbarium. Short retired from teaching in 1849.
Abigail "Abby" Kimber was an American botanist, botanical collector, social reformer, abolitionist, and women’s rights activist.
Josiah Hoopes was an American botanist specializing in arboriculture. He founded one of the largest commercial plant nurseries in the United States in his hometown of West Chester, Pennsylvania.
David Townsend was an American banker, botanist, and civic leader from Chester County, Pennsylvania. He was a lifelong friend and business associate of noted botanist William Darlington and was a founder and chief cashier of the National Bank of Chester County. The plant genus Townsendia was named in his honor.
William Walter Jefferis was an American mineralogist and curator of the William S. Vaux Collection of minerals and artifacts at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences from 1883 to 1898. He personally collected and cataloged 35,000 mineral specimens, which he sold to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in 1905.
