Joseph Charles Arthur was a pioneer American plant pathologist and mycologist best known for his work with the parasitic rust fungi (Pucciniales).
Background
Joseph Charles Arthur was born on January 11, 1850 in Lowville, New York, United States, the first of two children and only son of Charles and Ann (Allen) Arthur.
His father, a farmer, was descended from an English immigrant who settled in Groton, Connecticut, about 1745; his mother was a native of Canada.
When the boy was six years old, the family moved west and, after a brief stay near Sterling, Ill. , settled on a farm in Floyd County, near Charles City, Iowa. Here, surrounded by the largely virgin prairie, Arthur developed the interest in plants that persisted throughout his life.
He remembered his boyhood as "tranquil" and "wholesome as free and unfettered as the boundless prairies. " He early showed his independence by becoming skilled at needlework and avoiding the more strenuous boys' games such as touch-the-goal.
Education
After attending country schools and the Charles City high school, Arthur enrolled in 1869 with the first class at the newly established Iowa State College at Ames. Here his interest in botany was greatly stimulated by the instruction and the personal friendship of Prof. Charles E. Bessey. He received the B. S. degree in 1872 and in the same year published his first paper, on the double flowers in Ranunculus rhomboideus.
Since no positions were available in the field of botany, he taught in country schools for several winters and then returned to Iowa State, receiving the M. S. degree in 1877 with a thesis on the anatomy of the wild cucumber vine. After a semester of study at Johns Hopkins University and a summer term at Harvard, where he worked with the mycologist William G. Farlow, Arthur held instructorships at the universities of Wisconsin (1879-1881) and Minnesota (1882).
Career
In 1884 he was named botanist at the newly founded Agricultural Experiment Station at Geneva, N. Y. , and at the same time began to carry out research at Cornell University in plant pathology and mycology, for which he received the Sc. D. degree in 1886. The following year Arthur moved to Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana, where he founded and for many years headed the department of botany and plant pathology. He instituted laboratory instruction in plant physiology and built up an important herbarium, later known as the Arthur Herbarium.
During his years at Purdue, the university became recognized throughout the world as a leading center of research in this field. Arthur's interest in the life histories of rust fungi led him to propose a new system of classification based on variations in the life cycle. Although this system did not gain acceptance and he later abandoned it, the underlying concepts were important and served to emphasize the phylogenetic significance of the various types of life cycles. His ideas concerning nomenclature were unorthodox, and his continued adherence to them caused much confusion in the names of many species, some of which remains today. But these are relatively insignificant lapses in an otherwise remarkably productive career.
One of the most influential botanists of his era, Arthur carried out work on pear blight, cereal smuts, diseases of sugar beets, and potato scab that was of both scientific and economic importance. His research was instrumental in developing the liaison between the morphology of fungi and their physical characteristics.
Obviously, the period in which he lived was a factor in his career. The vegetation of the continent was poorly known and the fungi more poorly still. Arthur chose to devote much of his life to a single order of important parasitic fungi, and did so with rare persistence, publishing 149 papers on the Uredinales between 1883 and 1936.
Although he retired in 1915, retirement did not mean inactivity. The Plant Rusts (written with collaborators) was published fourteen years later, and his Manual of the Rusts in United States and Canada (1934) appeared when he was eighty-four. Arthur was president of the Indiana Academy of Science (1893), the Botanical Society of America (1902, 1919), and the American Phytopathological Society (1933).
He served the American Association for the Advancement of Science as secretary of Section F (1886) and assistant general secretary (1887). He made many trips to Europe and took part in the International Botanical Congresses held in Vienna (1905), Brussels (1910), and Cambridge (1930).
Arthur died at Brook, Indiana, in his ninety-third year, of congestive heart failure and was buried in Springvale Cemetery in Lafayette.
Achievements
His major contribution as a researcher was to mycology, and specifically to an understanding of the life cycles, geographical distribution, and classification of the rust fungi (order Uredinales) of North America.
His pioneer contributions to knowledge of the rust fungi of North America remain unsurpassed, and many other advances were made by men trained by or associated with him.
Religion
Arthur's family were devout Methodists, but in adult life Arthur was affiliated with the Presbyterian Church.
Membership
Member of the American Philosophical Society, member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Personality
A courteous, almost a courtly, gentleman of small stature but great dignity, he remained remarkably open-minded and tolerant of the opinions, scientific and otherwise, of his associates.
Interests
Music
Connections
On June 12, 1901, he had married Emily Stiles Potter, member of a pioneer family of Lafayette, Indiana, who died in 1935. There were no children.
