biography
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1796–1873)
|
| biography:
| Botanist, born in New York City, New York, USA. His interest in botany began in 1810, when he first met American naturalist Amos Eaton. Although he received his MD (1818) and practised medicine (1818–24), he preferred botany, and published results of a two-year survey of wild plants found within a 30 mi radius of New York City. His scientific papers on plants of the NE USA brought him fame, and large numbers of specimens collected by expeditions to the American West were sent to him for study and identification. He became dissatisfied with the Linnaean classification system, and introduced a more natural botanical system to his classifications of US flora. After marrying in 1824, he taught chemistry, mineralogy, and geology at the US Military Academy at West Point (1824–7). From then on his knowledge of chemistry provided the financial support to continue his primary interest, systematic botany. He returned to New York City to teach chemistry and botany at the College of Physicians and Surgeons (1827–55), concurrently serving the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) during the summers of 1830–54. In 1834 he met the young Asa Gray, and was sufficiently impressed to invite Gray to assist him on his projected multi-volume work, A Flora of North America, of which two volumes were published (1838, 1843) before the work was abandoned upon Gray's move to Harvard (1842). Torrey became chief assayer at the US Assay Office, New York (1854–73), which was then receiving large amounts of gold from California, and continued to expand his botanical collection while travelling on business to the W USA. In 1856 he became a trustee of Columbia University, and his library and herbarium were transferred to the New York Botanical Garden in 1899 (which he had helped to found). In addition to his pioneering contributions to the classification of American plants, he was an inspiring educator who influenced the careers of many future botanists. The Torrey Botanical Society, Torrey Peak in Colorado, the genus Torreya in the yew family, and the mineral torreyite are named in his honour. |
|
|
