29 Facts About Asa Gray

In 1848, Asa Gray was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.

Tanneries needed a lot of wood to burn, and the lumber supply in the area had been shrinking, so Asa Gray's father used his profits to buy farms in the area, and in about 1823 sold the tannery and became a farmer.

In October 1836 Asa Gray was selected to be one of the botanists on the United States Exploring Expedition, known as the "Wilkes Expedition", which was supposed to last three years.

The new state of Michigan was starting its university, and Asa Gray applied for a professorship in early 1838.

In 1848 Asa Gray was hired to work on the botanical specimens, and published the first volume of the report on botany in 1854, but Wilkes was unable to secure the funding for the second volume.

On July 17,1838, Asa Gray became the very first permanent paid professor at the newly founded University of Michigan, although in the event he never taught classes.

Eighteen months later the collector sent it to Joseph Whipple Congdon, who contacted Asa Gray, telling Asa Gray that he felt he had found Shortia.

Early in his years at Harvard, Asa Gray had to borrow money from his father.

Mr and Mrs Asa Gray departed for England on June 11,1850.

Wilkes wanted a literal Latin to English translation while Torrey and Asa Gray wanted a looser one because they felt that technical English terms were equally incomprehensible to the public.

In 1855, Torrey and Asa Gray contributed a "Report on the Botany of the Expedition" to Volume II of the Reports of Explorations and Surveys to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean.

Eaton later returned to Yale to be a botany professor and oversee its herbarium, just as Asa Gray did at Harvard.

Daniel Eaton was the grandson of Amos Eaton, whose textbooks Asa Gray had studied during his college days.

In 1859 Asa Gray was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

In 1864 Asa Gray donated 200,000 plant specimens and 2,200 books to Harvard with the condition that the herbarium and garden be built.

The publishers pressured Asa Gray to make these two books non-technical enough so that high school students and non-scientists could understand them.

Torrey was an early American supporter of the "natural system of classification", which relies upon geography and a plant's entire structure, and as his assistant, Asa Gray was a proponent of this system, too.

Harvard was able to secure substantial new funding for its botanical programs in the years after the war, but Asa Gray encountered significant trouble finding a suitable replacement for his professorial duties.

In early 1872 Asa Gray tried to resign his professorship and garden duties still with no replacement for himself.

Penhallow aided in Asa Gray's work regarding the distribution of northern hemisphere plants, and in 1882 Asa Gray recommended Penhallow as a lecturer to Sir John Dawson of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

One of the post-war collectors who worked extensively with Asa Gray was John Gill Lemmon, husband of fellow botanist Sara Plummer Lemmon.

Darwin then wrote to Asa Gray requesting information about the distribution of various species of American flowers, which Asa Gray provided, and which was helpful for the development of Darwin's theory.

Local geography could produce variances, like in the Galapagos and Hawaii, which Asa Gray did not get to study in depth as he had wanted.

The correspondence with Asa Gray was thus a key piece of evidence in establishing Darwin's intellectual priority with respect to the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Since there was no international copyright law at the time, Asa Gray worked to protect the book from publishing piracy.

The result of all this is that Asa Gray distanced himself from Social Darwinism.

In 1868, Asa Gray had a year's leave of absence and visited Darwin in England, the first time they had met since they started their correspondence.

One area where Darwin and Asa Gray disagreed was Darwin's theory of pangenesis.

Jane Asa Gray accompanied her husband on most of his expeditions.