Chrono-Biographical Sketch: Roland M. Harper

Some Biogeographers, Evolutionists and Ecologists:
Chrono-Biographical Sketches

Harper, Roland McMillan (United States 1878-1966)
botany, phytogeography

Photo courtesy of the Torrey Botanical Society.

Roland Harper was born in Maine but spent practically his entire professional life in the South, where his work embraced studies in plant geography, forestry, systematics, human demography, and economic botany. Harper's extensive field work for a number of different employers resulted in the discovery of over two dozen new species of flowering plants. An industrious and focused man, his published works exceeded five hundred in number.

Life Chronology

--born in Farmington, Maine, on 11 August 1878.
--1897: B.E., University of Georgia
--1901-1902: aide, U. S. National Herbarium
--1903-1904: forester for the Georgia Geological Survey
--1905: Ph.D. in botany, Columbia University
--1905-1966: botanist and geographer for the Alabama Geological Survey
--1908-1931: botanist and geographer for the Florida State Geological Survey
--1913: publishes his Economic Botany of Alabama , in two parts
--1917-1918: assistant in farm management, U. S. Department of Agriculture
--1925: heads the Florida state census
--1927: forester for the Alabama Commission of Forestry
--1928-1929: research professor of economics, University of Georgia
--1929: honorary Sc.D., University of Georgia
--1943: publishes his Forests of Alabama
--dies at Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on 30 April 1966.

For Additional Information, See:

--Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, Vol. 95(4) (1968): 391-396.
--Journal of the Alabama Academy of Science, Vol. 38 (1967): 111-113.
--Pioneer America, Vol. 10(2) (1978): 36-50.
--On Harper's Trail: Roland McMillan Harper, Pioneering Botanist of the Southern Coastal Plain (2008).

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