Áskell Löve

Who was Áskell Löve?

Áskell Löve was an Icelandic systematic botanist, particularly active in the Arctic.

Löve was born in Reykjavík. He studied botany at Lund University, Sweden, from 1937. He received his PhD in 1942 in botany and a D.Sc. degree in genetics the year after. 1941-1945, he was a research associate at Lund University and a corresponding geneticist at the University of Iceland. He married his fellow student and colleague Doris Löve née Wahlén. Together, they moved back to Iceland in 1945, where he served as director of Institute of Botany and Plant Breeding at the University of Iceland 1945-1951. Then, the family moved to North America, where Löve became associate professor of botany at the University of Manitoba, Canada. In 1956, he became Professeur de Recherches at Université de Montréal and, in 1964 professor of biology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, which he remained until 1974.

Löve was awarded a Guggenheim fellow in 1963 and elected member of the Icelandic Academy of Sciences. He was a co-founder of the Flora Europaea-project. He retained his Icelandic citizenship to his death.

Löve was particularly interested in the chromosome numbers of plants.