George Lincoln Goodale | |
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| Born | August 3, 1839 |
| Died | April 12, 1923(1923-04-12) (aged 83) Saco, Maine |
| Alma mater | Amherst College Harvard Medical School |
| Known for | Glass Flowers |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Bowdoin College Harvard University |
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George Lincoln Goodale (August 3, 1839 – April 12, 1923) was an Americanbotanist and the first director of Harvard's Botanical Museum (now part of theHarvard Museum of Natural History). It was he who commissioned the making of the university's legendaryGlass Flowers collection.
Goodale was born inSaco,Maine.[1] He graduated fromAmherst College in 1860 and fromHarvard Medical School in 1863, after which he practiced inPortland, Maine, until 1867.
Goodale becameprofessor ofnatural science and appliedchemistry atBowdoin. In 1872, he was appointed instructor inbotany andUniversitylecturer onvegetable physiology atHarvard,[2] and advanced to assistant professor of the latter subject a year later. In 1878, he became a professor of botany and theFisher professor of natural science, achair formerly held byAsa Gray.
At some point during his career as a Harvard/Radcliffe Professor, Goodale taught avid Botany studentMary Lee Ware - born to the ElizabethCabot Lee (from then on Elizabeth C. Ware) andDr. Charles Eliot Ware; a twist of fate that would turn critical later. After 1879, Goodale served as the firstdirector of Harvard'sBotanical Museum, but filling it was a slight problem for, at that time, Harvard was the global center of botanical study. As such, Goodale wanted the best, but the only used method was showcasing pressed and carefully labeled specimens — a methodology that offered a twofold problem: being pressed, the specimens were two-dimensional and tended to lose their color. Hence they were hardly the ideal teaching tools.[3][4] However, Harvard had recently procured severalglass marine invertebrates made by German glass artistsLeopold and Rudolf Blaschka and, upon seeing them, Professor Goodale realized that glass flowers would solve his problem[4][5] as, being glass, they were both three-dimensional and would retain their color. The only issue lay in convincing the Blaschkas to undertake such a project and how to fund it. The former took some time - and an advance payment of 200marks[5] - to accomplish, but eventually the famed glass artists agreed to send test-models to the U.S. and, although damaged in customs,[6] the fragments convinced Goodale that Blaschka glass art was a more than worthy educational investment.
But investments require fund, and to cover such an expensive enterprise Goodale approached his former student Mary Lee Ware and her mother with his idea. Being independently wealthy and (already) liberal benefactors of Harvard's botanical department,[7] Mary convinced her mother to agree to underwrite the consignment of the uncannily lifelike models they both were enchanted by. The contract signed dictated that the Blaschkas need only work half-time on the models (beginning in 1887) but, in 1890, they and Goodale - signing on behalf of the Wares - signed an updated version that allowed Leopold and Rudolf to work on them full-time;[8][9] some sources detail the agreement as a shift from a 3-year contract to a 10-year one, agreed to once Goodale convinced Mary and her mother of the wisdom in doing so. Either way, the Wares liberally funded the entire enterprise.[4] To this day the now world famousGlass Flowers are still on display at theHarvard Museum of Natural History — the exhibit itself dedicated to Dr. Charles Eliot Ware (the deceased father and husband of Mary L. and Elizabeth C. Ware respectively), the official name beingThe Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants. Moreover, unlike the glass marine invertebrates — which were "a profitable global mail-order business",[3] the Glass Flowers were commissioned solely for and are unique to Harvard.
Goodale was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1874.[10] In 1889, he served as president of theAmerican Society of Naturalists andpresident of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science. He was elected to the United StatesNational Academy of Sciences in 1890 and theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1893.[11][12][13] He also had a wife and son, the latter of whom, Francis Goodale, is known to have attended Mary Lee Ware's funeral on January 12 atKing's Chapel.[14] Goodale died in 1923 after, and presumably as a result of, an unknown illness. He was succeeded by ProfessorOakes Ames,[15][16] who takes up Goodale's work at the suggestion of Prof. Henshaw and is eventually made the second director of Harvard's Botanical Museum by President Lowell,[17] becoming an additional contact of Mary Lee Ware regarding the as yet unfinished Glass Flowers enterprise.[18]
In addition tomonographs and contributions toscientific journals, his publications include:
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905).New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.{{cite encyclopedia}}:Missing or empty|title= (help)
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