Cronquist, Arthur

Arthur Cronquist (1919-1992) was a plant taxonomist whose specialty was the Compositae. He was an expert on the intermountain and southwest flora of the United States. He was associated with the NYBG from 1943-1946 and from 1952-1992. He collaborated with Henry Allan Gleason on the "New Britton and Brown Illustrated Flora" (1952) and "Manual of Vascular Plants of Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada" (1963). He was Director of Botany(1971-1974) and Senior Scientist (1974-1992). He wrote two works on Classification of Flowering Plants. Cronquist was on the faculties of University of Georgia (1946-1948), Washington State University (1948-1951), Columbia University and Lehman College, CUNY where he served on the Executive Committee on Biology. He collaborated with Armen Takhtajan of the Komarov Institute in Leningrad and was honorary Vice President of the 1975 International Botanical Congress XII in Leningrad. Cronquist was born on March 19, 1919 in San Jose, California. He received his B.S. and M.S. from Utah State University and his Ph. D. from the University of Minnesota (1944). He died in March, 1992, while studying specimens at Brigham Young University.