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- Asa Gray (born November 18, 1810, Sauquoit, New York, U.S.—died January 30, 1888, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an American botanist whose extensive studies of North American flora did more than the work of any other botanist to unify the taxonomic knowledge of plants of this region.
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Asa Gray (born November 18, 1810, Sauquoit, New York, U.S.—died January 30, 1888, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an American botanist whose extensive studies of North American flora did more than the work of any other botanist to unify the taxonomic knowledge of plants of this region.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Academic Career
- Distribution of Plants
- Advocate and Critic of Darwin
- Further Reading
- Additional Sources
After accepting the professorship of botany at the newly founded University of Michigan, Gray sailed for Europe in 1838 to purchase books for the university and to study the type specimens of American plants in various herbaria. The year-long trip not only prepared Gray for his later task of coordinating North American botany but also laid the foun...
Gray was a pioneer in the field of plant geography. In 1859 he published his most famous contribution to thisfield, a monograph on the botany of Japan and its relations to that of North America. He demonstrated that the similar flora in the two regions had originated in one center and had been dispersed as conditions permitted. (This material was u...
On Sept. 5, 1857, Darwin wrote Gray the famous letter in which he first outlined his theory of the evolution of species by natural selection. Gray became Darwin's first American advocate and also one of his most searching critics. Although Gray accepted the main outlines of Darwin's theory, his insistence that evolution must be directed by some ext...
Gray's correspondence was edited by Jane Loring Gray, Letters of Asa Gray (2 vols., 1893). An excellent biography which includes an analysis of Gray's contributions to botany is A. Hunter Dupree, Asa Gray, 1810-1888 (1959). See also Andrew D. Rodgers, American Botany, 1873-1892: Decades of Transition (1914; repr. 1944), and Edward Lurie, Louis Agas...
Dupree, A. Hunter, Asa Gray, American botanist, friend of Darwin, Baltimore: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 1988. □
Asa Gray at 200. Biography; Harvard Professor; John Torrey; Gray's Manual of Botany; Jane Lathrop Loring Gray; Museum of Vegetable Products; Gray Herbarium and Library; Gray's Peak; Shortia galacifolia; Expedition to Mexico & the West; 75th Birthday Celebration; Publications
Asa Gray was born on November 18, 1810, in Sauquoit Valley, in the township of Paris, Oneida county, N. Y. His ancestors were of Scotch-Irish descent who had emigrated to Sauquoit from Mas-sachusetts and Vermont. He was the oldest of the eight children of Moses Wiley Gray and his wife, Roxana Howard Gray. In 1810
Asa Gray (1810-1888) was responsible for establishing systematic botany at Harvard and the United States. Gray's ties with European botanists combined with his network of collectors in North America allowed him to serve as a central clearinghouse for the identification of plants from newly explored areas of North America.
Nov 10, 2018 · Asa Gray was born on November 18, 1810 (died in 1888), in Oneida County, New York. With seven younger siblings, Gray grew up working on the family’s farm and becoming an avid naturalist, especially interested in minerals. His interest in botany began while at school, causing his father to enroll him in a local medical school.
Asa Gray, (born Nov. 18, 1810, Sauquoit, N.Y., U.S.—died Jan. 30, 1888, Cambridge, Mass.), U.S. botanist. He received a medical degree from Fairfield Medical School, where he spent his spare time studying plant specimens.
