Walter Tennyson Swingle (1871 - 1952)
Back to Author Index
Biography
Sources
Selected publications
Biography
1871 January 8, born in Canaan Township, Pennsylvania
1873 family moves to Kansas, settles on a farm near Manhattan
1888 appointed assistant botanist at Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station; starts publishing papers, some co-authored with Kellerman
1890 graduates with Bachelor of Science from Kansas State College of Agriculture at Manhattan; moves to Washington to work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture
1895 - 1896 studies with Strasburger at Bonn; his work becomes more cytological in focus
1898 another trip to study with Strasburger at Bonn
1899 publishes research on the culture of figs and dates; introduces the fig wasp, which pollinates figs, to America
1901 marries Lucie Romstaedt
1910 Lucie dies
1915 marries Maude Kellerman, daughter of Kellerman, his sometime mentor and co-author
1952 January 19, dies
1952 His time with the U.S. Department of Agriculture was spent mostly in Florida, working with the citrus crop. Hired to work on a fungal citrus canker, he became more interested in the trees than the fungus, and ended up working in citrus genetics and hybridizing, producing the Minneola and the tangelo.
Besides the above, Swingle became interested in Chinese botany through his interest in Citrus. He found over 100,000 Chinese books on botany for the Library of Congress. Unfortunately, his interest in mycology waned after his initial publications with Kellerman. Otherwise, he might really have accomplished something! :-)
Back to top
Sources
Harry Baker Humphrey (1961) Makers of North American Botany
Back to top
Selected Publications
Walter Tennyson Swingle (1892) "Some Peronosporaceae in the Herbarium of the Division of Vegetable Pathology" in Journal of Mycology 7:2 pp. 109 - 130
Back to top
