Chamberlain, Charles Joseph

Chamberlain, Charles Joseph

Charles Chamberlain, 1925

(credit: Courtesy of the Harshberger Collection, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and the Hunt Institute, Pittsburgh)

(born Feb. 23, 1863, Sullivan, Ohio, U.S.—died Feb. 5, 1943, Chicago, Ill.) U.S. botanist. His research into the structure and life cycles of primitive plants (cycads) enabled him to suggest a course of evolutionary development for the egg and embryo of seed plants (spermatophytes) and to speculate about a cycad origin for flowering plants (angiosperms). He organized and directed the botanical laboratories at the University of Chicago (1897–1931), where, with plants collected in Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Cuba, he created the world's foremost collection of living cycads.