Bessey, Charles E

Bessey, Charles E(dwin)

Bessey, c. 1910

(credit: Courtesy of Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pa.)

(born May 21, 1845, near Milton, Ohio, U.S.—died Feb. 25, 1915, Lincoln, Neb.) U.S. botanist. He taught at Iowa State Agricultural College (1870–84) before joining the faculty of the University of Nebraska. By then he had so developed the experimental study of plant morphology that the recently founded university immediately became one of the nation's outstanding centres for botanical research. He wrote widely popular textbooks that dominated U.S. botanical instruction for more than 50 years.