Male

November 18, 1810

January 30, 1888

Sauquoit, NY

Cambridge, MA

Jane Loring Gray (1848)

A devout Christian as an adult Gray had been born in Sauquoit, New York in 1810, and became an M.D. in 1831. However, he relinquished medicine for botany, and in 1842 was appointed professor of natural history at Harvard University, a post he retained until 1873. Through the donation of an immense book and plant collection numbering in the thousands, he effectively created the botany department at Harvard; the Gray Herbarium is named after him. He was President of the AAAS in 1871. In 1859, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

He was a pupil of John Torrey, with whom he worked closely; they published the Flora of North America together. The "Elements of Botany" (1836), an introductory textbook, was the first of Gray's many works.

Gray ...traveled to the American west on two separate occasions, the first in 1872 and then again with Joseph Dalton Hooker in 1877. Both times his goal was botanical research: he avidly collected plant specimens to bring back with him to Harvard. On his second trip through the American west, he and Hooker reportedly collected over 1000 specimens. They were accompanied for a time by Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden, then in charge of the U.S. Geological and Geophysical Survey of the Territories. Gray and Hooker's research was reported in their joint 1882 publication, "The Vegetation of the Rocky Mountain Region and a Comparison with that of Other Parts of the World," which appeared in volume six of Hayden's Bulletin of the United States Geological and Geophysical Survey of the Territories.

On both trips he climbed Grays Peak, one of Colorado's many fourteeners. This mountain was named after Gray by the botanist and explorer of the Rocky Mountains Charles Christopher Parry, who was likely a student of Gray's at Harvard.

Gray and Charles Darwin met at Kew, introduced by Joseph Dalton Hooker. Darwin then wrote to Gray requesting information about the distribution of various species of American flowers, which Gray provided, and which was helpful in providing information for the development of Darwin's theory. This was the beginning of an extensive lifelong correspondence. Gray arranged the first US Edition of On the Origin of Species and negotiated royalties on Darwin's behalf. Darwin held Gray in high esteem: he dedicated his book Forms of Flowers to Gray and he wrote in 1881 "there is hardly any one in the world whose approbation I value more highly than I do yours"

He died in 1888 and was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery. The cemetery's Asa Gray Garden, with a central fountain and numerous usual tree varieties, is named in his honor.
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Fairfield Medical College, Fairfield, NY (1831)

Educator