Lindsay Shepherd Olive
Lindsay Shepherd Olive (born April 30, 1917 in Florence , South Carolina , † October 19, 1988 in Highlands , North Carolina ) was an American mycologist . His specialties were gelatinous mushrooms and slime molds, which he made an outstanding contribution to research in the second half of the 20th century. Its botanical author abbreviation is " LSOlive ".
Life
Olive grew up as the eldest of three children in a farming family near Raleigh . In 1934 he began studying chemistry at the University of North Carolina , but soon turned to botany and specialized in mushroom science at an early age. He obtained his BA in 1938, his MA in 1940 and his Ph.D. in 1942, his work at this time mainly revolved around rust fungi until around 1953 . While studying, Olive met Anna Jean Grant, and the couple married in 1942.
After completing his studies, he worked as a botany teacher and also dealt with questions about the taxonomy of the tremellales , which would occupy him for a good decade. During a war activity for the United States Department of Agriculture , he also dealt temporarily, albeit dispassionately, with plant diseases .
After three years at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge , he moved to Columbia University in New York in 1949 . In 1955 he came into the public eye when he applied for a Guggenheim grant to support a research project on the subject of "The Jelly Mushrooms of the Society Islands" and was proposed by Senator William Proxmire for a Golden Fleece Award , which should brand the waste of public funds. Despite this incident, Olive was able to receive important impulses for his work on the taxonomy and phylogeny of mushrooms .
At the same time, he began a long-term collaboration with Bernard Ogelvie Dodge on the genetics of the sac fungus . In the late 1950s he met Carmen Stoianovitch , with whom he was to work on the taxonomy and biology of slime molds for over two decades .
In the 1960s , Olive was President of the Mycologal Society of America . In 1968 he moved from Columbia University back to the University of North Carolina . His main work "The Mycetozoans" from 1975 crowned his work on slime molds and is still a much-cited standard work today . Olive retired in 1982 and elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1983.
In 1984 Olive was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease , from which he died in 1988 after four years of care. His written estate, comprising 4,000 pieces, is kept in the Louis Round Wilson Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Ronald H. Petersen: Lindsay Shepherd Olive, 1917-1988 In: Mycologia, 81: 4, 1989, pp. 497-503
- ↑ lib.unc.edu: Lindsay S. Olive Papers, 1939-1982. , Accessed January 14, 2012
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Olive, Lindsay Shepherd |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | LSOlive (botanical author abbreviation) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American mycologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 30, 1917 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Florence , South Carolina |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 19, 1988 |
| Place of death | Highlands , North Carolina |