RARE \"Plant Pathologist\" Erwin Frink Smith Cut Signature For Sale
When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
RARE \"Plant Pathologist\" Erwin Frink Smith Cut Signature:
$139.99
Up for sale a RARE! "Plant Pathologist" Erwin Frink Smith Cut Signature.
ES-9647
Erwin Frink Smith
(January 21, 1854 – April 6, 1927) was an American plant
pathologist with the United States Department of
Agriculture. He played a major role in demonstrating that bacteria
could cause plant disease. Smith was born in Gilbert Mills,
near Fulton, New York to Louisa
Frink Smith and Rancellor King Smith. In 1870 he moved with his family to an
80-acre farm, which eventually included an apple orchard, in Clinton County, Michigan.
The farm ultimately failed, causing the Smith family to move to North Plains
Township, Michigan. Because he was no longer needed to help on the farm, Smith
was finally able to attend Ionia High School, starting in 1876, when he was 22
years old. Smith read widely and was largely self-taught in botany
and bacteriology.
In 1881, while still in high school, he co-authored a book on the flora of
Michigan titled "Cataloque of the Phaenogamous and Vascular Cryptogamous
Plants of Michigan" with Charles F. Wheeler.[6] In 1885 he published a book on
water sanitation. Smith also enjoyed writing poetry and wrote several poems
about his boyhood, his childhood teachers, and even a poem titled
"Evolution." Poverty kept Smith from attending college after
graduation from high school. Instead, he accepted a position at a Michigan
prison, where he worked as a guard. While working there, he developed an
interest in public health and sanitation and began reading about bacteriology. Smith
was accepted to the University of Michigan in 1885 and passed
examinations for most of the coursework soon after acceptance, which allowed
him to earn his bachelor's degree in biology after only one year at the
university. Soon after earning his 1886 bachelor's degree, he took a position
as chief of Plant Pathology in Bureau of Plant Industry. He earned his
doctorate from Michigan in 1889. Throughout his career, he pursued the
hypothesis that bacteria were significant causes of plant disease. Resistance
in the field, most notably by Alfred Fischer, eventually gave way,
culminating in his three-volume 1910 work Bacteria in Relation to Plant
Diseases. Dutch American botanical explorer Frank Nicholas Meyer worked for Smith in
1901, upon his arrival in the United States. Erwin
Smith married Charlotte May Buffet on April 13, 1893. Their marriage was a
happy one, but tragically terminated by Charlotte's death on December 28, 1906,
eight months after she was diagnosed with endocarditis.
Smith celebrated his wife's memory in an elegantly produced book of poetry and
biography entitled For Her Friends and Mine: A Book of Aspirations, Dreams
and Memories (1915).
At a time when it was unusual to do
so, Smith was known for hiring many women at the Bureau of Plant industry,
including botanists Nellie A. Brown, Mary K. Bryan,
Florence
Hedges, Lucia McCulloch, Agnes J.
Quirk, Angie Beckwith, and Charlotte Elliott. Historian Margaret W. Rossiter cites this as an
example of a harem effect. In Smith's case, a factor in
hiring women only as assistants may have been USDA's structural exclusion of
women from taking the examinations that would have allowed them to enter the
higher-ranking jobs for which they were qualified. Many of Smith's assistants
praised him for giving them research projects suited to their skills rather
than confining them to the more limited tasks presumed by their job
classifications.
Related Items:
RARE "Plant Geneticist" Sterling Wortman Signed FDC Dated 1959
$279.99
Rare Antique HARBSTER BROS Reading PA Hardware Works Apple Peeler 1868 Pat. USA
$135.00
Museum very rare plant fossil lycopod genus Sublepidophloios lepidodendroides
$78.00