Content area
Full Text
ABSTRACT
Professor William James Beal (1833-1924) became a leading educator and researcher in applied plant science while serving on the faculty of the new State Agricultural College in Michigan from 1871 to 1910. He was a key leader of the experimental movement of agricultural botany. Beal conducted the (i) first demonstration of hybrid vigor by controlled crossing of corn lines, 1878; (ii) initiation of the oldest ongoing U.S. botanical experiment involving the vitality of buried seeds, 1879; and (iii) first turfgrass experiments, including polystand compatibility, 1880. He initiated early, extensive seed purity/viability testing in 1877, and also organized the oldest, continuously operating U.S. botanical garden in 1877. He was an early advocate for forest conservation and reforestation. These works resulted in more than 1200 papers, plus seven extensive texts. Beal was a key proponent of scholarly communications among the few isolated scientists active in applied botany and in agricultural research. His eff orts contributed to the formation of several important early national agricultural science organizations. Beal was a key founder and first President of the (i) Society for the Promotion of Agricultural Science (SPAS), 1880; (ii) Association of Botanists in the United States Agricultural Experiment Stations, 1889; (iii) Botanical Club of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1888; and (iv) Michigan Academy of Science, 1884. The visionary outlook in organization of the SPAS was a vital pioneering step leading to formation of the American Society of Agronomy in 1907.
Abbreviations: AAAS, American Association for the Advancement of Science; SPAS, Society for the Promotion of Agricultural Science.
Through enormous energy and dedication, Dr. William James Beal pioneered applied botany research of economic plants, taught functional botany via keen observations in the real world of the outdoors and in a laboratory via the microscope, and was a key forefather in founding the American Society of Agronomy and other specialty agricultural science organizations. It is important to understand and appreciate the environment and conditions during the early formative years of this pioneering applied botanist when the term agronomist was not used in the USA.
FORMATIVE YEARS
William Beal was born on 11 Mar. 1833 and was raised in the wilderness of the southeastern Lower Peninsula, near Adrian, when Michigan was a territory (Beal, 1915)....