Edward W. Berry

Edward Wilber Berry (born February 10, 1875 in Newark , New Jersey , † September 20, 1945 ) was an American paleobotanist . Its official botanical author abbreviation is " EWBerry ".

life and work

After graduating from high school in 1890, he was unable to complete a higher education for financial reasons and never attended university before joining Johns Hopkins University. As a teenager he was interested in botany and collected fossils. As a paleobotanist, he was self-taught and began to publish about it, while his full-time career was first a sales representative, then manager and president of the Passaic Daily News. From 1904 to 1906 he was a volunteer in the Geological Survey of New Jersey and from 1905 to 1907 in that of North Carolina. In 1901 he received the Walker Prize from the Boston Society of Natural History . His knowledge impressed William Bullock Clark , head of the Geological Survey of Maryland, and he recommended him in 1906 for a position as an assistant in paleontology at Johns Hopkins University in order to organize the greatly increased collections. In 1908 he became an instructor and in 1910 an assistant professor (named associate). From 1907 he was also on the Maryland Geological Survey. In 1913 he became associate professor and in 1916 professor (without having obtained a doctorate).

Around 500 scientific publications originate from him, mostly on paleobotany and regional geology and fossil deposits. In addition to the USA, he also dealt with paleobotany in South America and took part in expeditions to the Andes, Venezuela, Peru and Ecuador.

He was Professor of Paleontology at Johns Hopkins University, where he also became Dean of the College for Arts and Sciences and Provost.

In 1924 he was President of the Paleontological Society and in 1945 President of the Geological Society of America . He was a member of the American Philosophical Society (1919), the National Academy of Sciences (1922) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1921). In 1930 he received an honorary doctorate from Lehigh University . In 1942 he received the Mary Clark Thompson Medal from the National Academy of Sciences.

He married in 1898 and had two sons.

Fonts (selection)

• A brief sketch of fossil plants, New Jersey Geological Survey, Annual Report for 1905, pp. 97-133
• The Flora of the Cliffwood Clays, New Jersey Geological Survey, Annual Report for 1905, pp. 135-172
• A study of the Tertiary Floras of the Atlantic Gulf Coast, Proc. American Philosophical Society, Vol. 50, 1911, pp. 301-315
• Paleobotany: a sketch of the origin and evolution of floras, Smithsonian Institution Annual Report 1918, pp. 289-407
• Tree Ancestors: A glimpse from the past, Baltimore, 1923
• Paleontology, McGraw Hill 1929
• The origin of Land Plants, Johns Hopkins University Studies Geology, Volume 14, 1945, pp. 9-91

literature

• Ernst Cloos , Biographical Memoirs National Academy of Sciences, 1974, PDF (1.9 MB; English)