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A report upon the boreal flora of the Sierra Nevada of California
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The Marine Algae of the Pacific Coast of North America: Pt. 3
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As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
William Albert Setchell was an American prominent botanist, authority on marine algae.
Background
He was born on April 15, 1864 in Norwich, Connecticut, United States, the second child and first son among the ten children of George Case Setchell, at first a coffee and spice mill worker and later a manufacturer, and Mary Ann (Davis) Setchell.
His father's ancestors had emigrated from England in the late eighteenth century; his mother had come to the United States as a child with her English-Welsh parents. Setchell early showed a strong interest in natural history, especially botany. The gift of a copy of Familiar Lectures on Botany, by Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps, helped him determine the names of many of the local plants. This experience at identification foreshadowed his later work in systematics, a branch of botany in which he made great contributions.
Education
A botany course he took while attending the Norwich Free Academy further stirred his interest. At Yale, which Setchell entered in 1883, there was as yet little instruction in botany, particularly for someone taking, as he did, the classical course.
His discovery, however, of the fern Asplenium montanum growing in Connecticut, far east of its usual habitat, had attracted the notice of Prof. Daniel Cady Eaton of Yale, an authority on ferns, who offered Setchell a study table in his home and the use of his library and herbarium. Eaton sent him on, after he took his B. A. in 1887, to Prof. William G. Farlow at Harvard, where Setchell received the Ph. D. in 1890 with a thesis on the New England kelp Saccorhiza dermatodea.
Career
With another local plant enthusiast, George R. Case, he published his first paper (privately printed) in 1883, a twelve-page catalogue of the wild plants growing in Norwich and vicinity. Around 1880 he also made the first of a series of visits to the seashore in eastern Connecticut to collect seaweeds, the field of his later major research.
In 1895 he togethrt with other enthusiastic students, notably Isaac Holden and Frank S. Collins, issued the first group of a series of mounted and named specimens, the Phycotheca Boreali-Americana, that ultimately (1919) reached fifty-one fascicles of thirty-five to fifty numbers each, distributed to subscribers throughout the world. Setchell returned to Yale as assistant (1891) and instructor (1892 - 95) in biology. For five years (1890 - 95) he spent his summers at Woods Hole, Massachussets, as supervisor of the work in marine botany at the Marine Biological Laboratory.
In 1895 he was called to the University of California at Berkeley as professor of botany and chairman of the department, a position he held until his retirement in 1934. He collaborated with Nathaniel L. Gardner.
He summed up his findings in The Marine Algae of the Pacific Coast of North America, of which three parts - on the blue-green, green, and brown algae - had been published (with Gardner as co-author, 1919-25) before his death.
A visit to the Samoan Islands in 1920 under the auspices of the Carnegie Institution of Washington initiated one of Setchell's most significant investigations, into the role of algae in the formation of coral reefs.
Broad in his interests, Setchell as a sideline at Harvard had studied the smut fungus genus Doassansia. He later published two important papers on this genus and directed the work of several students in mycology. Setchell also initiated the important work on the cytogenetics and taxonomy of the tobacco plant, Nicotiana, which was carried on for a long time at the University of California by his former students Thomas H. Goodspeed and Roy E. Clausen and their assistants.
He also served as director of the university's Botanical Garden and, for many years, as botanist of the California Agricultural Experiment Station. He gave particular attention to the development of the University Herbarium, purchased and gave to the university many rare books, and left it his own outstanding collection of algological books and pamphlets. Setchell contributed, as well, to the broader development of the University of California during the early presidency of Benjamin Ide Wheeler. He helped formulate the university's pioneering system of student self-government.
He was for many years an active member of the Bohemian Club of San Francisco.
For some years he had suffered from myocarditis; he died of internal hemorrhages at his apartment in Berkeley a few days before his seventy-ninth birthday.
Achievements
William Albert Setchell studied rich marine algal flora of the Pacific Coast of California for more than four decades and summed up his findings in his famous work The Marine Algae of the Pacific Coast of North America. He was the first to establish the critical temperature intervals governing the zone of distribution of various algae species in California, and made similar studies, as well, of aquatic seed plants, especially eelgrass, and land plants.
He also collected specimens of North American algae and published the results in the Phycotheca Boreali-Americana (46 bound volumes).
Setchell was largely responsible for building his department at Berkeley into one of the world's major botanical centers.
Among his honors were election to the American Philosophical Society and the National Academy of Sciences (both in 1919).
A large man of distinguished appearance, Setchell loved people and good conversation. He was especially happy when surrounded by the young, to whom he enjoyed acting as adviser and host. A generous man, he often gave timely financial help to needy students or young colleagues.
Quotes from others about the person
Through service on administrative and faculty committees, he was (in the words of Thomas H. Goodspeed) "one of those who interpreted the academic atmosphere and traditions of Harvard and Yale in terms of Western ideals and aspirations".
Connections
On December 15, 1920, Setchell married Mrs. Clara Ball (Pearson) Caldwell, of Edgewood. They had no children, and during the next twelve years Mrs. Setchell accompanied her husband on his scientific journeys, principally in the Pacific region, and helped him in his research in the laboratory. She died in 1934.
