Edward Tuckerman

Who was Edward Tuckerman?

Edward Tuckerman was an American botanist and professor who made significant contributions to the study of lichens and other alpine plants. He was a founding member of the Natural History Society of Boston and most of his career was spent at Amherst College. He did the majority of his collecting on the slopes of Mount Washington in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Tuckerman Ravine was named in his honor. The standard botanical author abbreviation Tuck. is applied to species he described.

Tuckerman was the eldest son of a Boston merchant, also Edward Tuckerman, and Sophia Tuckerman. He studied at Boston Latin School and then at his father's urging at Union College in Schenectady, which he entered as a sophomore and where he completed a BA in 1837 and to which he returned for his MA after taking a Law degree at Harvard in 1839, traveling in Germany and Scandinavia, and making the first of his botanical studies in the White Mountains. In 1846 he returned to Harvard as a senior, completed a second BA in 1847, then two or three years later entered the Divinity School and graduated from there in 1852.