Effie A. Southworth

Effie Almira Southworth (1860–1947) was an American botanist and mycologist, and the first woman plant pathologist hired by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).[1] Her most important discovery was the 1887 description of the fungus Colletotrichum gossypii as the cause of cotton cankers, a disease which killed thousands of acres of cotton and was a major economic threat.[2]

Biography

Southworth was born in North Collins, New York, in 1860. She studied at Allegheny College for one year before transferring to the University of Michigan, where she earned a bachelor's degree in 1885. She was then an instructor at Bryn Mawr College for two years before being hired by the Section of Mycology of the USDA in 1887 where she worked with Erwin F. Smith and Beverly T. Galloway and became involved in the study of fungal pathogens. She left the USDA in 1892 to become an assistant professor at Barnard College in New York, and in 1895 married botanist Volney Morgan Spalding, a professor at the University of Michigan. She worked worked as his assistant at Michigan until 1905, when Spalding and Southworth moved to Tucson, Arizona to work at the Desert Botanical Laboratory established by the Carnegie Institution for Science. Southworth here focused more on desert plants than plant diseases.[1]

After her husband, Volney Morgan Spalding, died in 1918, Southworth joined the faculty of University of Southern California. She died in April of 1947, in Los Angeles at the age of 87.[1][3]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Ristaino, J.; Peterson, P. (2002). "Pioneering Women in Plant Pathology, Part I: Effie A. Southworth, First Woman Plant Pathologist Hired at USDA". The Plant Health Instructor. doi:10.1094/PHI-I-2002-0201-01.
  2. ↑ "Discovering Women Scientists: The Legacy of Effie Southworth". American Phytopathological Society. March 16, 2001. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
  3. ↑ Demmon, Isaac N., ed. (1906). History of the University of Michigan, by the late Burke A. Hinsdale;. Ann Arbor,: University of Michigan. pp. 275–276.
  4. ↑ "Author Query for 'Southw.'". International Plant Names Index.

External links

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