author
John Merle Coulter
1851–1928
A pioneering American botanist and teacher, he helped turn plant study into a modern academic discipline and led major university programs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
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About the author
Born in Ningbo, China, in 1851 to missionary parents, he was raised in Indiana after his father's early death. He studied at Hanover College and began his scientific career on western geological surveys, where fieldwork in the Rocky Mountains sparked the plant research that would shape the rest of his life.
He went on to become one of the most influential botanists of his generation. He taught at Indiana University, served as president of both Indiana University and Lake Forest College, and later led the Department of Botany at the University of Chicago. His teaching, research, and editorial work helped establish botany as a rigorous university subject in the United States.
Remembered as both a scientist and an educator, he wrote and edited widely on plant structure and classification, and trained many students who carried his approach into the next generation of American botany.