Henry Shoemaker Conard

Henry Shoemaker Conard (1874 - 1971) was a leading authority on bryophytes and water lilies, as well as an early advocate of environmental preservation. From 1906 to 1955, Professor Conard worked at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa.[2] In 1954, he became the first to receive the Eminent Ecologist Award from the Ecological Society of America, an award that has continued annually ever since.

Henry S. Conard
Born(1874-09-12)September 12, 1874
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
DiedOctober 7, 1971(1971-10-07) (aged 97)
Haines City, Florida
Nationality American
Alma materHaverford College (B.S. 1894, M.S. 1895) and University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D. 1901)
AwardsEminent Ecologist Award from the Ecological Society of America (1954)[1]
Scientific career
FieldsBotany, bryology
InstitutionsGrinnell College (1906–1955)

In 1969, Grinnell acquired a 365-acre (1.48 km2) plot of cropland and established the Conard Environmental Research Area, in recognition of the legacy of the longtime professor.[3]

Early years

Conard was born September 12, 1874 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Thomas Pennington Conard, director of the West Grove boarding school,[4] and Rebecca Savery Baldwin Conard. His uncle, Alfred Fellenberg Conard, was a horticulturalist, specializing in the development and sale of rose varieties.[4] Henry Conard attended Friends' Select School in Philadelphia from 1881 to 1888. He entered Westtown Friends' Boarding School in Westtown, Pennsylvania in 1889 and graduated as valedictorian in 1892. He then enrolled at Haverford College, where he earned a B.S. in biology in 1895 and an M.A. in biology in 1895. While at Haverford, he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.[2]

Career

After a short time teaching science in Westtown, he entered the University of Pennsylvania as a Harrison Fellow in Biology in 1899, completing his Ph.D. in botany in 1901 and joining Sigma Xi. After receiving his doctorate, Conard taught botany at the university from 1901 to 1905. From 1905 to 1906, he was a Johnston Scholar at Johns Hopkins University.[2]

In 1906, Conard left Johns Hopkins to take a professorship in botany at Grinnell College. During his tenure at Grinnell, Professor Conard served as chair of the department of botany and, starting in 1935, as Chairman of the Faculty. He received emeritus faculty status in 1944. After his retirement, Professor Conard continued to be academically active, notably curating the bryophyte collections at the University of Iowa and running the Moss Clinic at the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory.[5]

Waterlilies (1905), from Conard's monograph

Personal life

Conard's first wife, E. Letitia Moon Conard, died in 1946. He married Louisa Sargent in 1950, with whom he moved to Florida in 1955, where they resided until his death on October 7, 1971 in Haines City, Florida.[6][7] He had three children, Elizabeth Conard, Rebecca Conard and Alfred F. Conard.[6] Alfred Fletcher Conard (1911-2009) graduated from Grinnell College in 1932, while his father was still on the college faculty, and proceeded to join the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School in 1954[8][9] and receive an honorary doctorate from Grinnell in 1971.[10]

Selected publications
  • The Waterlilies: A Monograph of the Genus Nymphaea. Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington. 1905. Retrieved August 27, 2018 – via Internet Archive.[11]
  • The Structure and Life-history of Hay-scented Fern. Washington D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington. 1908. Retrieved August 27, 2018 – via Biodiversity Heritage Library.
  • How to Know the Mosses. Pictured-Keys for Determining Many of the North American Mosses and Liverworts, with Suggestions and Aids for Their Study. William C. Brown. 1944.[12]
  • How to Know the Mosses and Liverworts (1979), Dubuque, Iowa: W.C. Brown

Notes
  1. Ecological Society of America. "ESA History > Awards" Archived 2008-05-14 at the Wayback Machine. Accessed April 29, 2008
  2. Welch and LeBlanc 1972, p. 558
  3. Grinnell College, Department of Biology. "CERA History" Archived 2006-09-01 at the Wayback Machine. Accessed April 29, 2008.
  4. Futhey, John Smith; Cope, Gilbert (1881-01-01). History of Chester County, Pennsylvania: With Genealogical and Biographical Sketches. Unigraphic.
  5. Welch and LeBlanc 1972, p. 559
  6. "Dr. Conard Dies, Leading Botanist". Al and Dorothy Pinder. The Grinnell Herald-Register. 11 October 1971. Retrieved 21 January 2016.
  7. "Henry S. Conard". Grinnell College. Grinnell College. Retrieved 21 January 2016.
  8. "Alfred F. Conard". www.law.umich.edu. Retrieved 2017-02-23.
  9. Kinsman, Clare D., ed. (1975). "Conard, Alfred Fletcher 1911-". Contemporary Authors: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Authors and Their Work. 13-16R. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research Company. p. 175. ISBN 0-8103-0027-3. Retrieved March 21, 2019 – via Internet Archive.
  10. "Past Honorary Degrees | Grinnell College". www.grinnell.edu. Archived from the original on 2017-02-23. Retrieved 2017-02-23.
  11. "Review of The Water-Lilies, a Monograph of the Genus Nymphaea by Henry S. Conard". Botanical Gazette. 40 (4): 311. 1905. doi:10.1086/328681. ISSN 0006-8071.
  12. Raup, H. M. (1946). "Review of How to Know the Mosses. Pictured-Keys for Determining Many of the North American Mosses and Liverworts, with Suggestions and Aids for Their Study by Henry S. Conard". The Quarterly Review of Biology. 21 (2): 186–187. doi:10.1086/395233. ISSN 0033-5770.
  13. IPNI.  Conard.
gollark: Um.
gollark: Taxation is theft.
gollark: That would be bizarre.
gollark: It is wrong.
gollark: [insert question here]?

References
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