Queer Places:
Toronto Necropolis, 200 Winchester Street, Toronto, ON M4X 1B7, Canada
Alice
Eastwood (January 19, 1859 – October 30, 1953) was a Canadian American
botanist. She is credited with building the botanical collection at the
California Academy of Sciences, in San Francisco. She published over 310
scientific articles and authored 395 land plant species names, the
fourth-highest number of such names authored by any female scientist.[2]
There are seventeen currently recognized species named for her, as well as the
genera Eastwoodia and Aliciella.
Alice Eastwood was born to Colin Skinner Eastwood and Eliza Jane Gowdey Eastwood on January 19, 1859, in Toronto, Canada. The family moved to Denver, Colorado, in 1873. In 1879, she graduated as valedictorian from Shawa Convent Catholic High School, in Denver. For the next ten years, Eastwood would teach at her alma mater, forgoing a college education.[3]
She was a self-taught botanist, and relied on knowledge from published botany manuals including Grey’s Manual and the Flora of Colorado.[3][4] Her botanical knowledge led her to being asked to guide Alfred Russel Wallace up the summit of Grays Peak in Denver. Eastwood was also a member of Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell's Colorado Biological Association.[5]
In 1891, after reviewing Eastwood’s specimen collection in Denver, Mary Katharine Brandegee, Curator of the Botany Department at the California Academy of Sciences, hired Eastwood to assist in the Academy’s Herbarium.[4] There Eastwood oversaw tremendous growth of the Herbarium.[4] In 1892, Eastwood was promoted to a position as joint curator of the Academy with Brandegee. By 1894, with the retirement of Brandegee, Eastwood was procurator and Head of the Department of Botany, a position she held until her 1949 retirement.
She died in San Francisco on October 30, 1953. The Academy retains a collection of her papers and works.[3]
My published books:
