biography
| name: |
Ames, Oakes (botany)
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1874–1950)
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| biography:
| Botanist, born in North Easton, Massachusetts, USA. He taught and performed research at Harvard (1898–1941), and was instrumental in founding Harvard's Atkins Garden in Cienfuegos, Cuba (1900). His skilled administration (1937–45) brought Harvard's Botanical Museum to prominence. He amassed a large collection of orchid specimens (his specialty), and made major contributions to studies of their taxonomy and evolution. A pioneer in economic botany, he devised the Ames charts in which plant families were pictured and identified by their economic products. His theory (1930s) that civilization was directly dependent on agriculture - eventually supported by archaeological findings - was summed up in his masterwork, Economic Annuals and Human Culture (1939). |
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