Benjamin Minge Duggar (1872 - 1956)
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Biography
Sources
Further Sources
Selected publications
Biography
1872 September 1, born in Gallion, Mississippi
1887 enters University of Alabama, transfers two years later to Mississippi A & M
1891 graduates from Mississippi A & M
1893 receives M.Sc. from Alabama Polytechnic Institute
1894 B.A. from Harvard
1895 M.A. from Harvard
1898 PhD from Cornell
1901 marries Marie Robertson
various academic positions around the country
1912 appointed research professor of plant physiology at Washington University and the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis
1922 wife Marie dies
1927 left Washington University to become professor of plant physiology and economic botany at University of Wisconsin; marries Elsie Rist
1943 retires from U. Wisconsin, becomes consultant in mycological research to Lederle Laboratories division of the American Cyanamid Company
Duggar studied under Atkinson at Alabama Polytech, and it was Atkinson who invited him to Cornell for his doctorate. His PhD thesis was in cytology, and he did much research around this time on the germination of fungal spores. In his short appointment with the U.S. Bureau of Plant Industry he started projects there on cotton diseases and mushroom culture in the South.
According to Humphrey, Duggar investigated and published on
"tomato pigmentation ... nitrogen fixation, transpiration, salt requirements of phanerogams, and techniques for the determination of hydrogen-ion concentration in plant and animal fluids .... as well as ... a study of tobacco-mosaic virus." p. 73-4
And that was just in St. Louis.
Under his direction, the lab at American Cyanamid discovered chlortetracycline and aureomycin.
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Sources
Harry Baker Humphrey (1961) Makers of North American Botany
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Further Sources
J. C. Walker (1958) "Benjamin Minge Duggar" in Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences
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Selected Publications
Benjamin Minge Duggar (1905) "The principles of mushroom growing and mushroom spawn-making" in USDA Bureau of Plant Industry Bulletin 35 pp. 1 - 60
Benjamin Minge Duggar (1907) Fungous Diseases of Plants
Benjamin Minge Duggar (1912) Plant Physiology
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