Asa Gray

Asa Gray (1810–1888) was the leading American botanist of the nineteenth century. Trained as a physician in upstate New York, he turned to botany under John Torrey and in 1842 became Fisher Professor of Natural History at Harvard, where he built the herbarium and the botanical library that bear his name. His Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States (1848) remained the standard field guide for a century. A close correspondent of Charles Darwin, he was the first American champion of natural selection and argued that it was compatible with Christian belief. His letters were published by his widow in 1893.