Erling Porsild

Alf Erling Porsild
Born January 17, 1901
Copenhagen, Denmark
Died November 14, 1977 (aged 76)
Vienna, Austria
Nationality Danish-Canadian
Fields Botany
Institutions National Museum of Canada
Known for Flora of the Arctic, coining the word pingo
Notable awards Massey Medal for 1966

Alf Erling Porsild (1901-1977) was a Danish-Canadian botanist.

Biography

He was born in Copenhagen as a son of the botanist M.P. Porsild. He grew up on the Arctic Station in Qeqertarsuaq, West Greenland, where he acted as assistant to his father. Between 1936-1945, he was curator at the National Museum of Canada, Ottawa, and from 1945 to 1967 he was head of the department of botany there. He authored over 100 scientific articles on the flora of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and of the Rocky Mountains, as well as numerous popular papers and books, including important floras of Canada's Arctic and northern regions.

He made over 25,000 plant collections (numbers), resulting in over 100,000 specimens which are deposited in the National Herbarium of Canada (CAN) at the Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa, and in other herbaria around the world.

Porsild was hired to take part in the Canadian Reindeer Project to bring reindeer herding to the indigenous populations of northern Canada in the hopes of building a sustainable industry.[1]

He borrowed the term pingo from Inuit and made it a scientific and vernacular term (first used in 1938). Porsild Pingo in Tuktoyaktuk is named in his honor. So is Mount Porsild in the Yukon Territory, Canada. Porsild's starwort (Stellaria porsildii), a plant native to mountains in Arizona and New Mexico, is also named in his honor.[2]

The Canadian Botanical Association awards annually the 'Alf Erling Porsild Award', in recognition of the best paper published in the field of systematics and phytogeography that year by a graduate student in a Canadian university or a Canadian student in a foreign university.

Porsild was awarded the Massey Medal by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in 1966.

Selected works

References

  1. "The Reindeer Industry and the Canadian Eskimo", Retrieved 1 December 2012.
  2. Chinnappa, C.C. 1992. Stellaria porsildii, sp. nov., a new member of the S. longipes Complex (Caryophyllaceae). Systematic Botany 17(1): 29-32.
  3. "Author Query for 'A.E.Porsild'". International Plant Names Index.

Soper, J.H. and W.J. Cody. 1978. Alf Erling Porsild, M.B.E., F.R.S.C. (1901-1977). Canadian Field Naturalist 92:298-304.

External links

Dathan, Wendy (2012). The Reindeer Botanist: Alf Erling Porsild, 1901-1977. University of Calgary Press. ISBN 9781552385876. [This is an open access book]