Edgar Shannon Anderson

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Edgar Shannon Anderson (born November 9, 1897 in Forrestville , New York , † June 18, 1969 ) was an American botanist and geneticist. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " ESAnderson ".

Anderson grew up in East Lansing, Michigan, studied botany from 1914 at Michigan State College and from 1919 at Harvard University (Bussey Institution), where he received his doctorate in agricultural genetics in 1922 under Edward Murray East . He then worked as a geneticist at the Missouri Botanical Garden and an assistant professor of botany at Washington University in St. Louis. In 1929 he was in England, where he worked with Ronald Fisher and JBS Haldane . At that time he was investigating geographic variations of Iris versicolor . From 1931 he was back in the USA and at the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University where he worked with the geneticist Karl Sax . From 1935 he was back in Missouri, where he became Engelmann Professor of Botany at Washington University in 1937 . In 1954 he was a brief director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, but then returned to his chair. In 1967 he retired.

In 1941 he held the Jesup Lectures at Columbia University on the role of genetics in plant systematics. He was a specialist in maize varieties and their history. His 1949 book Introgressive Hybridization was an essential contribution to genetics in botany. While investigating the hybridization of plants, he found a trend towards hybridization of habitats : in an environment disturbed by humans, crossbreeds, whose parents brought various adaptive advantages to the new environment, prevailed. For example, he examined variants of iris in the Mississippi Delta.

He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1934), a member of the National Academy of Sciences and President of the Botanical Society of America . Anderson received the Darwin Wallace Medal in 1958 .

Fonts

  • The Species Problem in Iris, Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, Vol. 23, 1936, pp. 457-509.
  • Maize in Mexico. A preliminary survey, Annals Missouri Botanical Garden, Volume 33, 1946, pp. 147-247
  • Hybridization of the habitat, Evolution, Vol. 2, 1948, pp. 1-9
  • Introgressive Hybridization, Wiley 1949
  • with JJ Newlin, Earl Bressman (Eds.), Corn and Corn Growing, Wiley 1949
  • Man as the maker of new plants and new plant communities, in WZ Thomas, Man's role in changing the face of the earth, University of Chicago Press 1956
  • with GL Stebbins: Hybridization as an evolutionary stimulus, Evolution, Volume 8, 1954, pp. 378-388
  • Plants, Man and Life, New York: Little, Brown and Co. 1952 (Reprinted from University of California Press, Berkeley 1967)
  • Evolution of domestication, in S. Tax, Evolution after Darwin: The Evolution of Man, University of Chicago Press 1959
  • with Ricardo Ramirez a. a. Races of Maize in Bolivia, Nat. Res. Council Publ., Washington DC 1960
  • with David Timothy u. a., Races of Maize in Chile, Nat. Res. Council Publ., Washington DC, 1961
  • The role of hybridization in evolution, in WH Johnson, WC Steere (Eds.), This is life, Essays in Modern Biology, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962, pp. 287-314
  • Experimental studies of the species concept, Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, Volume 55, 1968, pp. 179-192
  • What we do not know about Zea mays, Trans. Kansas Acad. Sci., Vol. 71, 1968, pp. 373-378

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personal data
SURNAME Anderson, Edgar Shannon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American botanist
DATE OF BIRTH November 9, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Forrestville , New York
DATE OF DEATH June 18, 1969