Gray, Asa

Asa (1810-1888), an American botanist. A native of Paris, Oneida County, New York. He was educated at Fairfield College for medicine, and later became an assistant of the noted botanist, Torrey, at the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 1842 Gray was appointed Fisher professor of natural history in Harvard University, from which he retired in 1873. Dr. Gray was in charge of the best equipped department of botany in the United States at a time when the cataloging of newly discovered plants was active, especially of plants from the western part of our country. He had the pleasure of naming hundreds of plants new to science, and did much to popularize the study of botany.

Among his writings are several text books, notably How Plants Grow, Lessons in Botany, and Manual of Botany. A number of important papers in the Smithsonian publications deal with collections of plants from the west and southwest. His Botany of the United States Pacific Exploring Expedition is a report on the plants collected by that expedition (1854).

Dr. Gray's classifications of plants stand critical study well. He arranged his keys and Manual, beginning with buttercups and proceeding to the lower orders last. This order has been reversed by later writers. Gray and Torrey designed a complete manual of the plants of North America but left the work incomplete. Gray and Agassiz were fellow teachers in Harvard. They held opposite ideas of the origin of species. Agassiz taught that each wild rose was the result of a separate act of creation; Gray taught that the various kinds of roses are the results of different kinds of life,--that a prairie rose is the result of a prairie life, etc., and a climbing rose the result of life in the brush.

Dr. Gray's collection of plants, now known as the Gray Herbarium, has a building of its own in the botanical garden of Harvard University. It is one of the most important collections of plants in the world. It contains many original specimens from which species were named. With recent additions, the Gray Herbarium now contains over 385,000 sheets of mounted specimens. Under proper restrictions it is open for the use of students in botany.

See Botanic Garden; Linnaeus