MacDaniels, L. H. (Laurence Howland), 1888-1986

Professor of floriculture and ornamental horticulture, Cornell University.

Laurence Howland MacDaniels received a B.A. from Oberlin College in 1912, where he was a member of the championship football team. He received a Ph.D. from Cornell in 1917, serving as an instructor in botany from 1914 to 1917. From 1917 and 1919 he worked as a member of the Botanical Raw Products Committee of the National Research Council and for the Bureau of Aircraft Production. In 1919 and 1920 he and his wife did relief work with Armenian refugees in Turkey through the American Committee for Relief in the Near East. In the fall of 1920 he returned to Cornell as an assistant professor of pomology and in 1923 was promoted to professor. During his sabbatical leave in 1926-27, he conducted a botanical survey of the fe'i banana as it related to Polynesian migration, in association with the Bishop Museum of Honolulu. In 1940, MacDaniels was appointed head of the Department of Floriculture and Ornamental Horticulture, a position he held until his retirement in 1956. During World War II, the department, under his leadership, focused on rubber production from American plant species, the use of plant materials for camouflage, and food production through Victory Gardens. From 1943-1945, on leave, he served in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon as director of agricultural extension for the Near East Foundation, and later with the UNRRA. In 1949 he continued his Polynesian work in Caledonia, the New Hebrides, and Canton Island.

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