Warren H. Wagner

Warren H. Wagner Jr. (August 29, 1920 – January 8, 2000), known as Herb Wagner, from his middle name, "Herbert," was an eminent American botanist who was trained at Berkeley with E.B. Copeland and lived most of his professional career in Michigan. A longtime faculty member at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), he developed, in the early 1960s, the first algorithm for discerning phylogenetic relationships among species based upon their respective character states observed over a set of characters. This work was honored by James Farris and Arnold Kluge in their later appellation of related algorithms as "Wagner parsimony."

Wagner specialized in the ferns, later in life especially the Botrychiaceae. Having served in the U.S. Military in the Pacific Theater in World War II, he maintained a lifelong interest in the diversity and origin of the ferns of Hawaii. Working with his wife Florence Wagner, an accomplished cytologist, he resolved the relationships of an array of polyploid complexes in North American ferns, first the Appalachian trio of Asplenium species, then in Dryopteris and Polystichum, Wagner was most respected among his colleagues and students for his genius in discerning and articulating the differences in form between plant species in the context of their variation with environmental factors. He was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1985.

Apparently among modern phylogenetic systematists, Wagner is alone in having been mentioned in a Hollywood film (A New Leaf, starring Elaine May and Walter Matthau).

Note: not to be confused with the American botanist Warren L. Wagner (1950- ).

External links

• University of Michigan Herbarium - University of Michigan Herbarium
• Wagner Biography at the National Academy of Sciences