Prof. Roland Thaxter

Abstract

PROF. ROLAND THAXTER, of Harvard, died on April 22, at the age of seventy-three years. He was born at Newton, Mass., on Aug. 28,1858, and graduated at Harvard University in 1882, proceeding to post-graduate work there until he was appointed mycologist at the Connecticut Experimental Station in 1888. Three years later he returned to Harvard as assistant professor of cryptogamic botany, becoming professor in 1901. He retired in 1919 with the title of emeritus professor, and acted as honorary curator of the Farlow Herbarium. Such is the bare outline of the career of one whose work in mycology is classical. His first researches were on the rust Gymnosporangium, but he published an account of the entomogenous family Entomopthoreæ in 1888, which still remains one of the most important papers on the group. A few phytopathological reports appeared while he was at Connecticut, some of considerable interest. In 1890 he made his first contribution to our knowledge of the peculiar entomogenous fungi, the Laboulbeniaceæ, and it is with these that his name is chiefly associated, for from being almost unknown, they became, owing to Thaxter's enthusiasm, a group as well understood as any other and containing hundreds of genera and thousands of species.