William Ashbrook Kellerman (1850 - 1908)
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Biography
Sources
Selected publications
Biography
1850 May 1, born in Asheville, Ohio
1867 teaches school, eventually enrolls at Cornell University
1874 graduates from Cornell, teaches school in Oshkosh, Wisconsin
1876 marries Stella Victoria Dennis
1879 leaves for Europe to attend Universities of Göttingen and Zürich
1881 earns PhD from University of Zürich, appointed professor of botany and zoology at Kentucky State College in Lexington
appointed professor of botany and zoology at the State College of Agriculture in Manhattan, Kansas; later also appointed botanist of the Kansas State Agricultural Experiment Station
1885 founds "Journal of Mycology", later renamed "Mycologia"
1891 appointed professor of botany at Ohio State University
1893 appointed botanist to Ohio State Geological Survey; prepares exhibit for the World's Fair in Chicago: an exhibit of the forestry of Ohio
1894 USDA takes over Journal of Mycology
1902 resumes editorship (and publishership) of Journal of Mycology
1904 starts annual collecting expeditions to Guatemala, begins lobbying for a school of tropical botany at Ohio State
1907 Ohio State authorizes the extension of its botanical field to include Guatemala; on his trip this year, Kellerman contracts the fever of which he dies soon after returning
Kellerman's first important work seems to have been done on the smuts of wheat and oats. He performed a series of experiments at the Kansas State Agricultural Experiment Station, showing that hot water was an effective agent in preventing smutting of these grains. These results were published as Loose Smuts of Cereals.
He published about three hundred scientific papers. His forestry exhibit for the world's fair in 1893 included an example of every tree indigenous to the state, and earned him a Columbian Exposition medal. He also prepared and distributed many sets of exsiccati, both of Ohio plants and those of Guatamala. These were concentrated in phanerogams and parasitic fungi.
In 1885, Kellerman founded the "Journal of Mycology", and served as its editor and publisher for nine years, at which point it was taken over by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 1902, they transferred control back to Kellerman, and he again became its editor and publisher. After his death, the journal was taken over by the New York Botanical Garden and its name was changed to "Mycologia".
He also published a little pamphlet from 1903-1907, called the Ohio Mycological Bulletin, which was the newsletter of the Ohio Mycological Club, which he apparently had a big hand in. According to the Bulletin, their membership was ~600 in the first year, and 785 in the second! (What are we doing wrong today?) The Bulletin is pretty much aimed at the total beginner, but Peck and Atkinson were members of the club and contributed light articles and notices of some new species. It also contains a very long and fairly technical key to Cortinarius (spread over of the last issues two issues) by Kauffman. I have taken several of the portraits in this database from the newsletter.
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Sources
Harry Baker Humphrey (1961) Makers of North American Botany
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Selected Publications
William Ashbrook Kellerman (1883) Elements of Botany
William Ashbrook Kellerman (1888) Analytical Flora of Kansas
William Ashbrook Kellerman (1889) Loose Smuts of Cereals
William Ashbrook Kellerman (1897) Phycotheca
William Ashbrook Kellerman (1904 - 1907) Ohio Mycological BulletinThis is the little bulletin that Kellerman issued for the Ohio club.
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