biography
| name: |
Berry, Edward Wilber
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1875–1954)
|
| biography:
| Palaeobotanist, born in Newark, New Jersey. USA. His formal education ended at age 15 and he pursued a career as a journalist. He expanded his childhood interest in botany and geology by reading and making detailed observations, and published scientific articles on the systematic palaeobotany of New Jersey fossils. He won a Walker Prize for his book on the diversity and ancestry of the tulip poplar (1901) while working as president, treasurer, and manager of the Passaic, NJ Daily News (1897–1905). He spent the rest of his career at Johns Hopkins (1907–42), serving as dean (1929–42) and provost (1935–42), and during most of those years also working as a geologist with the US Geological Survey and the state of Maryland. His specialties included taxonomic palaeobotany and the palaeobotany of South America. His success despite his lack of an advanced education made him antagonistic towards what he perceived as irrelevance in college curricula, believing that learning should be a lifetime pursuit, and should not end with the obtaining of a degree. |
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