George Baker Cummins

George Baker Cummins (born August 29, 1904 in Tecumseh ( Nebraska ), † March 30, 2007 in Tucson ( Arizona ) was an American mycologist . He was considered an authority on the field of rust fungi . His botanical abbreviation is " Cummins ".

Live and act

George Baker Cummins was born in 1904, the second child of Nellie Baker and George Wilson Cummins. In 1906 the family moved to western Montana , where they bought a 100 acre farm that George helped on as a child. Cummins attended public schools in Darby and also worked with other farmers in the area during his summer high school years. In 1922 he graduated from Darby High School, where he had also played on the basketball team until then . He then attended Montana State College , now Montana State University , in Bozeman . There he first studied engineering for a year , but then switched to botany and bacteriology . Also at the College played Cummins basketball, the first year in the freshman - and then in Varsityteam the Montana State Bobcats . During the summer months, he and a school friend from Darby worked for the United States Department of Agriculture on a barberry control program to control blackened grain . This is considered Cummins' first concern with rust fungus .

In 1927, Cummins graduated from Montana State College with a Bachelor of Science degree in botany and bacteriology. In the fall of the same year he began a two-year postgraduate course at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor on a ten-month scholarship of US $ 600 . His master's thesis was a study of Discomycetes of the Flathead National Forest that appeared in the 1930 publications of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts and Letters .

Originally wanted George Cummins then at the University of his studies in a doctoral program for Ph.D. continue. At the request of Edwin Butterworth Mains and on the recommendation of his mentor Calvin Henry Kauffman , Cummins moved to Purdue University as a research assistant in January 1930 , where he worked on the manual of rusts in the United States , where he had been 80-year-old Joseph Charles Arthur, who had already been retired for 15 years and Canada , which appeared in 1934. Cummins spent the first three years at Purdue University entirely on the manual. In particular, he made drawings of the mushrooms. Arthur only recognized him for this by mentioning it in the introduction. In the early days, Cummins intended to return to the University of Michigan and do his Ph.D. to acquire. However, after he found pleasure in his work and there were changes at Michigan University after Kauffman's death, Cummins decided to take a doctoral degree at Purdue University, which he graduated in 1935.

In the fall of 1930, George Baker Cummins married his first wife, Margaret Sempill. From this marriage in 1934 son Richard and 1936 daughter Elaine were born. His wife Margaret died shortly after their daughter was born. In 1938, Cummins married his second wife, Mildred Shriver. He also had two children with her.

After the death of Joseph Charles Arthur in 1942 at the age of 92, Cummins published an amendment with changes to the nomenclature in 1962, which was incorporated into the second edition of the manual in the same year.
In 1947 he was appointed professor .

George Baker Cummins spent 40 years at the College of Agriculture. From 1966 until his retirement in 1970 he was head of the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology. At the same time he was also the curator of the Arthur Herbarium .
Cummins briefly described his specialty as the taxonomy and biology of rust fungi in the world. He published research results on rust fungi in the Philippines , New Guinea , China , the Himalayas , Central and West Africa , South America and North America . He has authored or co-authored 117 publications with the introduction of 470 new taxa of rust fungi.

Even in retirement, which he spent with his wife in Tucson ( Arizona ), Cummins continued to work in science. With Yasuyuki Hiratsuka he published his last book in 2003 at the age of 99 with the third edition of Illustrated genera of rust fungi .

George Baker Cummins died on March 30, 2007 at the age of 102 in Tucson, Arizona, his wife on August 22 of the following year at the age of 101.

Fonts (selection)

• Illustrated genera of rust fungi. (1959)
• Rust fungi on cereals, grasses and bamboos. (1971)
• Rust fungi on legumes and composites in North America. (1978)

Honors

• Treasurer of the Mycological Society of America from 1942 to 1944
• Vice President of the Mycological Society of America 1945
• President of the Mycological Society of America 1946
• Councilor of the Mycological Society of America from 1947 to 1948
• Distinguished Mycologist Award 1981
• Honorary Doctorates from Montana State University (1963), Purdue University (1981)
• Mencion Honorıfica in Agriculture of the Banco Nacional de Mexico (1982)

swell

• Robert L. Gilbertson, Meredith Blackwell: George Baker Cummins 1904-2007. Mycologia 101 (2009), pp. 745-749, doi : 10.3852 / 09-032 , PDF file

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cummins, George Baker (1904-2009) in the International Plant Names Index (IPNI)
2. ↑ Cummins, George Baker (1904-x) In: Taxonomic literature: a selective guide to botanical publications and collections with dates, commentaries and types (TL ₂ )