Background
Copeland, Edwin Bingham was born on September 30, 1873 in Monroe, Wisconsin, United States. Son of Herbert Edson and Alice (Bingham) Copeland.
biologist Botanist pteridologist
Copeland, Edwin Bingham was born on September 30, 1873 in Monroe, Wisconsin, United States. Son of Herbert Edson and Alice (Bingham) Copeland.
Bachelor of Arts, Leland Stanford Junior University, 1895. Student Leipzig, 1895-1896. Doctor of Philisophy, University of Halle, 1896.
Studied University of Wisconsin, 1896-1897, 1898, University of Chicago, 1901-1902.
He is known for founding the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture at Los Baños, Laguna and for being one of the America"s leading pteridologists (one who studies ferns). In 1903, he and his family moved to the Philippines and worked as a Systematic Botanist for the Bureau of Science. In 1909, he founded the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture at Los Baños, Laguna, now part of the University of the Philippines Los Baños, and served as its dean and also as a professor of plant physiology for eight years (1909–1917).
In 1917, he returned to the United States and was a leading rice grower in Chico, California.
In 1927, he began work as an Associate Curator at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1931, he worked for the Department of Agriculture of the Philippines, retiring in 1935.
After retiring he returned to University of California Berkeley and became a permanent Research Associate of the Department of Biology of the University of California. He is best known among American botanists for this latter period at University of California. During his career he describeed 35 new genera and some 600 new species of ferns.
His personal herbarium totaled approximately 25,000 species and is now at the University of Michigan Herbarium at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
He wrote numerous articles and several books including "Elements of Philippine Agriculture" (1908), "The Coconut" (three editions, 1914, 1921, and 1931), "Rice" (1924), "Fern" (1964) and "Natural Conduct" (1928), a book on practical ethics. In a letter during his final months, a friend Curriculum Vitae Morton wrote, "You have the consolation of knowing that your name is in constant use by fern students the world over."
His father was the zoologist Herbert Edson Copeland (1849–1876) and he was the father of biologist Herbert Copeland.
He was elected an Honorary Member of the American Fern Society in 1948.
Married Ethel Faulkner, of Chico, California, December 19, 1900. Children: Herbert Faulkner, Mary Faulkner, Alice Bingham, Charles Faulkner, John Bingham.