Theo Holm

Who was Theo Holm?

Herman Theodor "Theo" Holm was a Danish-American systematic botanist. He studied botany at the University of Copenhagen under professor Eugenius Warming and graduated 1880. He participated in the Danish Dijmphna expedition to the territory between Russia and the North Pole during the First International Polar Year 1882-1883. The ship was icebound in the Kara Sea. He explored the flora of West Greenland as assistant to Warming on the Fylla expedition in 1884. He them emigrated to the U.S.A., landing in New York on April 12, 1888. He soon was employed as assistant botanist by the U.S. National Museum. 1893-1897, he was assistant pathologist with the U.S.D.A.. He obtained his Ph.D. in botany from the Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. in 1902. He then moved to the countryside of Maryland and did assistant work as a botanist for the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S.D.A.. In 1932, he joined the faculty of the Catholic University of America, but died soon after.

His works deal with plants from the New and Old World Arctic and from the Rocky Mountains, mainly taxonomy and morphology. He was an unrivalled observer and drawer of plant structures.