Asa Gray

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Asa Gray

Library of Congress

[b. Sauquoit, New York, November 18, 1810, d. Cambridge, Massachusetts, January 30, 1888]

A noted plant collector, Harvard University professor, and author of a series of botany textbooks, Gray helped found the study of plant geography. He noted similarities in plants of eastern Asia and eastern North America, theorizing that the plants were descendants of a single species that had lived across the Northern Hemisphere prior to the Ice Age.

Asa Gray (1810-1888), American botanist, pioneered in the study of plant geography and made early attempts to reconcile Darwinian concepts of evolution with traditional religious beliefs.

During the 19th century botany in America emerged as a highly professional vocation involving collaboration among collectors and herbarium specialists. A new method of classification was coming into use early in Asa Gray's career - the so-called natural system, which aimed at classification on the basis of general similarities instead of by the old, Linnaean method of counting the male and female parts of a flower. The new system forced botanists to look more closely at the forms and structures of plants. They began to study the interrelations between plants and their environment and to inquire into their meaning. Gray's professional lifetime bridged these important developments, and he played a part in all of them.

Asa Gray was born at Sauquoit, N.Y., on Nov. 18, 1810. After attending medical courses he received his degree in 1831 and began practice as a country physician. But he had already developed an interest in botany and began to drift away from medicine. From 1832 to 1835 he taught science at a high school in Utica, N.Y., utilizing the summers to improve his botanical knowledge. In 1835 he moved to New York City to begin collaborating with John Torrey on Flora of North America (2 vols., 1838-1843), which firmly established the new natural system of classification in American botany. Publication of the first volume made Torrey and Gray the leading botanists of North America and brought them international attention.

Academic Career

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 foundation of his lifelong friendship with leading European botanists. However, because the opening of the university was delayed, Gray never assumed the professorship.

In 1842 Gray became professor of natural history at Harvard, a post he held until retiring in 1873. The first edition of his Botanical Text-Book (1843) was long a standard work that did much to unify the interpretation and application of technical terms in America. Gray never lost his early interest in popular instruction; he produced five other textbooks, all important in lower-school education.

While at Harvard, Gray became the unofficial but widely recognized coordinator of American botany, maintaining regular correspondence with prominent European botanists and receiving a constant supply of specimens from U.S. government exploring expeditions and correspondents in the West. He created the Harvard department of botany and made its herbarium and botanical garden the finest in America.

Distribution of Plants

Gray was a pioneer in the field of plant geography. In 1859 he published his most famous contribution to this field, 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 used by Charles Darwin to support his theory of evolution.) To explain the migration of flora in this case, Gray suggested that past geological changes would have made it possible; he thus joined a dynamic theory of the earth with a theory of plant distribution. Relying greatly upon information supplied by James Dwight Dana, a Yale geologist, Gray showed that, on at least two occasions in the past, conditions existed that could have allowed continuity between the flora of the two regions.

Advocate and Critic of Darwin

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 external force allowed him to preserve his own Presbyterian beliefs. After Gray's initial review of Darwin's Origin of Species in the American Journal of Science, of which he was a coeditor, Gray spent much of his life arguing on both a popular and a scientific level for the compatibility of evolutionary theory and religion. He also arranged for the first American edition of Origin of Species.

One of the original members of the National Academy of Sciences, Gray was president of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was a regent of the Smithsonian Institution. He died at home in Cambridge, Mass., on Jan. 30, 1888. His wife, Jane Loring Gray, whom he had married in 1848, edited his autobiography and letters.

Further Reading

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 Agassiz: A Life in Science (1960). For the general scientific background see George H. Daniels, American Science in the Age of Jackson (1968).

Additional Sources

Dupree, A. Hunter, Asa Gray, American botanist, friend of Darwin, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.

Asa Gray
Born	November 18, 1810(1810-11-18) Sauquoit, New York
Died	January 30, 1888 (aged 77)
Nationality	American
Fields	Botany
Influences	Charles Darwin
Religious stance	Presbyterian

Asa Gray (November 18, 1810 – January 30, 1888) is considered the most important American botanist of the 19th century.^[1]

He was instrumental in unifying the taxonomic knowledge of the plants of North America. Of Gray's many works on botany, the most popular was his Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, from New England to Wisconsin and South to Ohio and Pennsylvania Inclusive. This book, known simply as Gray's Manual, has gone through a number of editions with botanical illustrations by Isaac Sprague, and remains a standard in the field.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Relationship with Darwin 2 Legacy 3 Publications 4 Notes 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External links

Biography

A devout Deist as an adult [1] Gray had been born in Sauquoit, New York in 1810, and became an M.D. in 1831. However, he relinquished medicine for botany, and in 1842 was appointed professor of natural history at Harvard University, a post he retained until 1873 while living in the Asa Gray House. Through the donation of an immense book and plant collection numbering in the thousands, he effectively created the botany department at Harvard; the Gray Herbarium is named after him. He was President of the AAAS in 1871. In 1859, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

He was a pupil of John Torrey, with whom he worked closely; they published the Flora of North America together. The "Elements of Botany"(1836), an introductory textbook, was the first of Gray's many works.

He died in 1888 and was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery. The cemetery's Asa Gray Garden, with a central fountain and numerous usual tree varieties, is named in his honor.

Relationship with Darwin

Gray and Charles Darwin met at Kew, introduced by Joseph Dalton Hooker. Darwin then wrote to Gray requesting information about the distribution of various species of American flowers, which Gray provided, and which was helpful in providing information for the development of Darwin's theory. This was the beginning of an extensive lifelong correspondence.

When Darwin received Alfred Russel Wallace's paper which described natural selection, Hooker and Charles Lyell arranged for a joint reading of papers by Darwin and Wallace to the Linnean Society. Since Darwin had nothing prepared, the reading included excerpts from his 1844 Essay and from a letter he had sent to Asa Gray in 1857, outlining his theory. Darwin and Wallace did not attend the meeting. The papers were published by the society as On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection.^[2].

Gray arranged the first US Edition of On the Origin of Species and negotiated royalties on Darwin's behalf^[3]. Darwin held Gray in high esteem: he dedicated his book Forms of Flowers to Gray and he wrote in 1881 "there is hardly any one in the world whose approbation I value more highly than I do yours" ^[4] Gray, considered by Darwin to be his friend and "best advocate", also attempted to convince Darwin in these letters that design was inherent in all forms of life, and to return to his faith. Darwin agreed that his theories were "not at all necessarily deistical" but was unable to share Gray's belief. "I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton," he wrote.^[4]

Notwithstanding, Gray was a staunch supporter of Darwin in America, and collected together a number of his own writings to produce an influential book, Diana. These essays argued for a conciliation between Darwinian evolution and the tenets of deism, at a time when many on both sides perceived the two as mutually exclusive.^[5] Gray denied that investigation of physical causes stood opposed to the theological view and the study of the harmonies between mind and Nature, and thought it "most presumable that an intellectual conception realized in Nature would be realized through natural agencies"^[6]

In 1868 Gray had a year's leave of absence and visited Darwin in England - the first time they had met since they started their correspondence. Darwin had Gray in mind when he wrote that "It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent deist & an evolutionist"^[7]

Legacy

Grave in Mount Auburn Cemetery

The Asa Gray Award, the highest award of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, was established in 1984 to honor a living botanist for career achievements.

Grayanotoxin and Gray Peak (New York) are named after him. Also, a residential building is named after him on the Stony Brook University campus.

The standard author abbreviation A.Gray is used to indicate this individual as the author when citing a botanical name.^[8]

Publications

The Vegetation of the Rocky Mountain Region, and A Comparison With That of Other Parts of the World (Author's ed.). Washington: Government Printing Office. 1880. http://books.google.com/books?id=ur4YAAAAYAAJ. 

Notes

1. ^ "Biographies of scientists and explorers". http://www.swcoloradowildflowers.com/biographies%20of%20naturalists%202.htm. Retrieved 2007-10-01. 
2. ^ The Darwin-Wallace Paper (complete)
3. ^ Letter from Darwin to Gray - See note 3
4. ^ ^{a b} Letter 13031 — Darwin, C. R. to Gray, Asa, 29 Jan 1881
5. ^ Dramatized extracts from the Darwin Gray Correspondence
6. ^ Gray - Darwinania
7. ^ Letter 12041 — Darwin, C. R. to Fordyce, John, 7 May 1879
8. ^ "Author Query". International Plant Names Index. http://www.ipni.org/ipni/authorsearchpage.do. 

References

• Gray, Asa (1888), Darwiniana: Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism, New York: D. Appleton, http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=side&itemID=A336&pageseq=1, retrieved 2008-02-17 
• Asa Gray. Dictionary of American Biography. American Council of Learned Societies, 1928-1936.
• Asa Gray. Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.
• Asa Gray. Plant Sciences. 4 vols. Macmillan Reference USA, 2001.

Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Asa Gray

• Dupree, A. H. Asa Gray, 1810-1888. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1959.
• Gray, Jane Loring, ed. Letters of Asa Gray. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1894.
• Scientific Papers of Asa Gray, Volume I, selected by Charles Sprague Sargent
• Scientific Papers of Asa Gray, Volume II, selected by Charles Sprague Sargent
• Works by Asa Gray at Project Gutenberg
• Charles Darwin and Asa Gray Discuss Teleology and Design, by Sara Joan Miles. (American Scientific Affiliation)
• Brief Biography and timeline of Asa Gray's life at the website of the Gray Herbarium in Harvard
• A flora of North America, Wiley & Putnam, 1838-1843. Two volumes. With John Torrey
• Gray's Botanical text-book, American Book Company, 1879. Two volumes.
• Gray's school and field book of botany, American Book Company, 1887
• Introduction to structural and systematic botany and vegetable physiology, Phinney & Co., 1862.
• A manual of the botany of the northern United States, 1848. With William Starling Sullivant.
• A natural system of botany, 1837.
• Plantae Wrightianae e Cuba orientali/A. Grisebach, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1860-1862. With A. Grisebach and Charles Wright
• Synoptical flora of North America : the Gamopetalae, a second edition of vol. I, pt. II, and vol. II, pt. I / collected by Asa Gray, Smithsonian Institution, 1888.
• Synoptical flora of North America, American Book Company, 1878-1895/97.

External links

• Darwin Correspondence Project
• Darwin Correspondence Project - Gray, Asa

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