HIST: William Setchell

From: Bill Shear <BILLS@hsc.edu>

A while ago I stumbled on a photograph of a group of biologists at Woods
Hole, one of whom was indentified as William Setchell.  Previously, my only
knowledge of this name was through the iris called that, which I grew back
in the mid 1950s (it was an older iris then, having been relegated by
Schreiner's to the ultracheap beginner's collection).  Interestingly, I saw
it again at the OKC convention. (The iris is a nicely formed violet bitone
with very large flowers--for its time it was one of the very largest, and
still seems pretty big).  I used two biological mailing lists I am on to
enquire about Setchell and  got the following replies:

"William Setchell (1864 - 1943) was one of the students of William Gilson
Farlow at Harvard (Ph.D 1890).  He studied algae (macroalgae mostly) and
continued to do so at Yale (1891 - 1895) and the University of California,
Berkeley (1895-1934). Certainly in his student days he spent time at Woods
Hole and perhaps later on as well."

Don Pfister

"William Albert Setchell was, indirectly, the subject of a paper I
just co-authored, along with several other contributions, in the journal
Taxon, volume 48 (just out, May 1999), pages 257-315. There's even a
photograph of Setchell. His dates are 15 April 1864 to 5 April 1943; student
at Yale and later at Harvard, mostly worked at UC-Berkeley, in marine
phycology but also plant geography ("geobotany" one of his favorite words).
A colleague named a Mexican endemic shrub for him, which my colleagues and I
worked on for phylogenetic purposes; that's the only tie-in."

James Rodman

Now--I don't have access to the checklists, and would be interested to know
who introduced the iris 'William Setchell', and what their connection to
Setchell was.  Anner, is this getting interesting enough for you to work
on?  How about you, Mike?

Bill Shear
Department of Biology
Hampden-Sydney College
Hampden-Sydney VA 23943
(804)223-6172
FAX (804)223-6374
email<bills@hsc.edu>




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