Frank Lincoln Stevens (April 1, 1871,Onondaga County, New York – August 18, 1934,Winnetka, Illinois) was an American mycologist and phytopathologist. He gained an international reputation as one of the preeminent mycologists.[1]
Frank Lincoln Stevens grew up on a farm nearSyracuse, New York.[2] He received secondary education at Onondaga Academy.[3][4] In his boyhood and teenage years he read about science, created a homemade laboratory, and made, within Onondaga County, comprehensive collections of ferns and geological specimens. Without any formal instruction in chemistry, he passed examinations in chemistry at the high school level.[2] He graduated in 1891 with aB.L. fromHobart College inGeneva, New York.[5] With advice fromDavid Grandison Fairchild, whom he encountered at theAgricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, New York, Stevens matriculated atRutgers University to study botany and, especially, plant pathology.[2] From 1891 to 1893 he was a student assistant at Rutgers and the New Jersey Agricultural Experimental Station. He graduated from Rutgers with a B.S. in 1893 and an M.S. in 1897.[5] In June 1897 he married Adeline Theodora Chapman[5][6] (1867–1937). She became the first woman faculty member at North Carolina State when she taught biology there from 1902 to 1903.[7] She was the coauthor, with her husband and with Tait Butler (1862–1939), ofA Practical Arithmetic (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909).[8][9]
Frank L. Stevens taught science atRacine College from 1893 to 1894, taught chemistry and botany atCentral High School in Columbus, Ohio from 1894 to 1897, and worked as a sanitary analyst for theChicago Drainage Canal Investigation from 1899 to 1900.[5] During the time that he and his wife spent in Columbus, Ohio, he was allowed to use the laboratories at Ohio University and became interested in the parasitic fungusAlbugo bliti (which is now renamedWilsoniana bliti). He received, based upon a thesis on this parasitic fungus,[2] a Ph.D. in 1900 from theUniversity of Chicago, after enrolling there as a graduate student and receiving a fellowship in botany from 1898 to 1899.[5] As a postdoc, he received from the University of Chicago a traveling fellowship from 1900 to 1901. The fellowship enabled him to study at theUniversity of Bonn, theUniversity of Halle, and theStazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn.[2]
AtNorth Carolina State University, Stevens was from 1901 to 1902 an instructor in biology and from 1902 to 1912 a professor of botany and vegetable pathology. For a number of years he was a biologist and the head of the department of plant diseases at the North Caroline Agricultural Experimental Station.[5] During his years in North Carolina he studiedGranville wilt and the breeding and selection of various crops having resistance towilt disease. He coauthored a textbookAgriculture for Beginners (Ginn & Company, 1903) for younger students[10][11] and the important textbookDiseases of Economic Plants (Macmillan, 1910). While a professor in North Carolina, he collected with John Galentine Hall (1870–1949).[2]
From 1912 to 1914 Stevens was the dean of agriculture at theUniversity of Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico, he collected fungi andcompleted his bookThe Fungi Which Cause Plant Disease (Macmillan, 1913). Prior to 1914 he collected inTrinidad and Tobago, as well as Puerto Rico.[2] In the Caribbean islands his co-collectors were William E. Hess[12] andNathaniel Lord Britton.[2][13]
In Puerto Rico, the collection by Stevens from 1912 to 1914 ofrusts (fungi in the order Pucciniales, previously known as Uredinales) made a valuable contribution to tropical mycology. In his collection there are 620 numbers of material collected in 1913, 23 collected in 1912, and 7 collected in January 1914. The collection has 18 rust species that were new to science.[14]
At theUniversity of Illinois, Stevens was a professor of plant pathology from 1914 until his death in 1934. During his Illinois professorship he collected in Guyana, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, the Philippines, and Hawaii.[2] He collected Hawaiian fungi from 1920 to 1921 when he was on academic leave absence as aBishop Museum Fellow appointed byYale University.[15]
He was elected in 1899 a fellow of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science.[16] He was the president of theAmerican Phytopathological Society in 1910.[2]
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