Jacob Bigelow, 1786-1879

Jacob Bigelow was born in Sudbury, Mass. on February 27, 1786; he has been variously described as the son of a Congregational minister and the son of a farmer. After obtaining his A.B. from Harvard in 1806, he went to the University of Pennsylvania, earning an M.D. in 1810. He practiced medicine by himself for a year without much financial success and then began a practice in Boston with Dr. James Jackson in 1811. The following year he lectured on botany at Harvard with W.D. Peck; the interest shown in his lectures led him to compile his FLORULA BOSTONIENSIS, which was published in 1814. The following year he was appointed professor of materiamedica at the Harvard Medical School, a post he retained until 1855. With Dr. Francis Boott he began work on a flora of New England, but this project was given up. From 1817-1820 he published AMERICAN MEDICAL BOTANY, for which he drew many of the plates and devised the means of reproducing them through a color aqua-tint process. A revised edition of the FLORULA BOSTONIENSIS, published in 1824, marks the end of Bigelow's period of greatest botanical activity.

As his work in developing a process for printing the plates of his AMERICAN MEDICAL BOTANY shows, Bigelow was also interested in mechanics. This interest led to his appointment as Rumford professor of the application of science to useful arts at Harvard from 1816-1827 and to the publication of his ELEMENTS OF TECHNOLOGY in 1829. In addition, Bigelow was active in the preparation of the first U.S. Pharmacopoeia, wrote on medical topics and on education, and played a major role in the establishment and design of Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. Bigelow died in Boston on January 10, 1879.

References: Bailey, L.H., Jr. "Some North American Botanists: V. Jacob Bigelow." BOTANICAL GAZETTE 8 (1883): 217-222. Elliott, Clark A. BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN SCIENCE: THE SEVENTEENTH THROUGH THE NINETEENTH CENTURIES. 1979.

From the guide to the Botanical illustrations by Jacob Bigelow, 1813-1819? (inclusive), (Gray Herbarium Library)