Background
Louis Hermann Pammel was born on April 19, 1862 in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, United States. He was the second of five children born to Prussian immigrants Louis Carl Pammel and Sophie (Freise) Pammel.
Louis Hermann Pammel was born on April 19, 1862 in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, United States. He was the second of five children born to Prussian immigrants Louis Carl Pammel and Sophie (Freise) Pammel.
In 1885 Louis Pammel graduated with a bachelor's degree in agriculture from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where William Trelease taught him courses in ecology, cryptogamic botany, and botanical taxonomy.
In July 1885 Louis Pammel became employed in a Chicago seed company. In October 1885 he became a medical student at Philadelphia's Hahnemann Medical College. However, he soon accepted an offer to work as an assistant to the botanist William G. Farlow at Harvard University and arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts in early December 1885.
Trelease and Farlow assisted Louis Pammel in securing a post as professor of botany at Iowa Agricultural College, where he began teaching in 1889. He immediately established the pattern of "volcanic, almost furious activity" that biographer Marjorie Pohl observes was the hallmark of his character. He continued to work on his doctorate for the next decade, during which time his family also continued to grow.
As a teacher and researcher, Louis Pammel had expansive interests in economic botany, plant pathology, bacteriology, mycology, horticulture, forestry, bees and pollination, seeds and germination, flowers, grasses, climate, ecology, and conservation. Much of his research was carried out under the auspices of the Botanical Seed Laboratory, which he established at Iowa State College in 1906. Louis Pammel often spent summers conducting research for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which enabled him to build the collections of the Iowa State Herbarium.
A prolific scholar, Louis Pammel authored or coauthored six scholarly books (a seventh was published posthumously); wrote nearly 700 articles, research notes, reports, educational circulars, and addresses; edited the Major John F. Lacey Memorial Volume for the Iowa Park and Forestry Association; and penned two reminiscences.
Louis Pammel seems never to have erected artificial boundaries between the professional, public, and personal aspects of his life, and the thrust of his scholarship was always directed toward practical applications and public education. Through the Iowa State Extension Service, he made his services, and those of his students, available to municipalities and state agencies. He analyzed public water supplies and sewage disposal systems. For the state legislature, Louis Pammel helped write bills addressing agricultural and horticultural needs. He oversaw the preparation of exhibits and educational pamphlets for the annual Iowa State Fair and established a plant laboratory on the fairgrounds. He directed the preparation of exhibits on crop diseases as part of Iowa’s displays at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. Louis Pammel initiated annual plant disease surveys for the state, public service work that brought national and international recognition - in 1919 he was called upon to serve as one of four distinguished scientists on the American Plant Pest Committee, a joint U.S.- Canada initiative.
Louis Pammel also served as president of the Iowa Academy of Science (1892-1893, 1923) and the Iowa Park and Forestry Association (1904-1906). Additionally, he served on the State Forestry Commission (1908-1929), the State Geological Board (1918-1929), the Plant Life Commission (1917), and the State Board of Conservation (1918-1927). In great demand as a public speaker, Louis Pammel often spoke before chambers of commerce, men’s groups, women’s clubs, and campus organizations; at high school and college graduation ceremonies; and at churches.
Louis Pammel made his most enduring contributions to the state of Iowa as chairman of the Board of Conservation, the precursor of the State Conservation Commission, and today’s Department of Natural Resources. Under his direction, Iowa became a leader in the development of state parks. The National Conference on State Parks (NCSP) held its 1921 organizational meeting in Des Moines, and when the NCSP made its first national assessment of state parks in 1925, Iowa ranked fourth in terms of the number of parks established. The park acquisition list he developed, published in 1919 as Iowa Parks: Conservation of Iowa Historic, Scenic, and Scientific Areas, set resource conservation above recreation and determined the course of park development throughout his lifetime. When the Devil’s Backbone area of Madison County was renamed and dedicated as Pammel State Park in 1930, the Board of Conservation cited his work "for the cause of conservation" as "the most valuable single influence in this movement” in the state of Iowa.
Deteriorating health prompted Louis Pammel to relinquish his chairmanship in 1927, although he continued to be a forceful advocate. When he died in 1931, Iowa had 40 designated state parks and preserves, and the Board of Conservation had jurisdiction over 7,500 acres of land, 41,000 acres of lake waters, 800 miles of rivers, and 4,200 acres of drained lake beds.
In 1887 Louis Pammel married Augusta Marie Emmel, whom he had met during his brief sojourn in Chicago. During the next decade, six children were born to the couple, which undoubtedly contributed to his delay in earning a doctoral degree in 1899.