Botany celebrates 100 years of teaching, fieldwork, outreach

Department of Botany celebrates a century of excellence

By Sandra Hines
News & Information

A hundred years ago when the University first established a Department of Botany, Chair H. R. Foster was the sole faculty member and his students could - for $1 per credit - take elementary botany, cell morphology, experimental physiology, history of botany or participate in the field or journal clubs.

In this 1952 photo, C. Leo Hitchcock, far right, for whom Hitchcock Hall is named, leads a class in the field.

Today more than 20 faculty and emeritus faculty have interests that range from the molecular level to the entire biosphere. Instead of one classroom shared in turn by all the sciences at the turn of the century - the botany department today has several greenhouses, controlled environment rooms and chambers, an electron microscopy facility, culture collections, excellent herbarium and labs equipped for work in cellular biology, biochemistry, molecular biology and molecular genetics.

To celebrate the advances during the past 100 years, as well as recognizing long-held traditions of teaching, fieldwork and public outreach, the Department of Botany celebrated the 100th anniversary recently with an open house, excursions, banquet, photo display and a special alumni lecture.

Botany was taught even before 1900 at the UW, with the first mention of the subject appearing in the 1875 catalog in which Miss May W. Thayer was listed as teaching German, botany and physiology. It wasn’t until 1900, however, that the university actually created the botany department. By that time, the UW had moved from downtown to the current campus and, in 1902, constructed Science Hall (now Parrington Hall) with space for chemistry in the basement, geology on the first floor, zoology on the second and botany on the third. Among other things, botany had access to a lecture hall seating 100 students, lab space for 40 students, rooms for other specialties and an herbarium of about 3,000 specimens - but still only one faculty member, the same as the other science departments.

From left, John Hotson, T.C. Frye and George Rigg are gathered in Frye’s office in 1932. Photo by Robert Tschudy

Foster, the first chair, resigned after three years and the UW hired Theodore C. Frye, the man who would be the dominant personality and leader of the department for the next four decades, according to a A Century of Botany at the University of Washington now being completed by Emeritus Professor Richard B. Walker.

Frye’s specialty was morphology, with an emphasis on lower plants. In the early years Frye and a single assistant gave about eight hours of lecture each week, in six different courses, and conducted laboratory sections totaling about 30 hours a week. Former student Robert Tschudy said, “Dr. Frye was the best of teachers. He used good methods - I remember that he once used a mop from the closet to illustrate flagella . . . Frye required graduate students to take chemistry and physics, also philosophy. French and German were required languages.”

It was early in the 1900s that botany first sought to work with high schools in the state, inviting them to inspect textbooks and materials available in the department and to contact faculty with questions about biological materials, identifying specimens and preparations for class demonstrations. Saturday classes were offered specifically for schoolteachers and books written by UW faculty were widely used by high school biology teachers.

Frye was joined on the faculty in 1909 by George Rigg, a physiologist and ecologist, and in 1911 by John W. Hotson, a mycologist and pathologist. These three individuals constituted the faculty of the department for almost three decades.

Botany was a popular major for undergraduates in the early years, Walker writes. Master’s degrees were first awarded in 1910 and the first doctoral degree was awarded in 1920. Service courses in botany for students in forestry, pharmacology and fisheries were also an important part of the department’s teaching efforts.

In 1904 Professor Trevor Kincaid of zoology and Frye helped establish the Puget Sound Biological Station, now the Friday Harbor Laboratories. Frye was the director of the station from 1910 to 1930, spending each nine-week summer quarter there doing teaching and research, fostering the development of the early site, helping to acquire the federally owned 485-acre Point Caution property, and overseeing the construction of labs and support facilities.

The station appealed to schoolteachers as well as professors and their graduate students from U.S. and foreign institutions. Included in Walker’s history is an account by Frye of a stressful period in 1924 when 104 tent platforms and frames had to be built in a very rainy June to accommodate more than 200 persons in the camp, who had to be fed outside because the dining hall was not yet finished.

It was in 1930 that the Board of Regents changed the Puget Sound Biological Station into the UW Oceanographical Laboratories with oceanographer Thomas G. Thompson as director. Whereas Frye no longer worked at the station, other department members and students continued collaborative work there, a tradition that goes on today.

The early years at the Friday Harbor facilities, the department’s move into Johnson Hall in 1930 and photos of other historical events were part of a special display at the 100th anniversary celebration.

The display included numerous photos of summer fieldwork. Carrying on Frye’s long tradition, C. Leo Hitchcock, who would be department chair for 20 years from 1942 until 1962, conducted various trips that “. . .were legendary not only for the demanding Hitchcock itinerary and instruction, but for the camaraderie and the gourmet Hitchcock cooking,” Walker writes.

Along with fieldwork and teaching, Hitchcock and his colleagues expanded both the facility and the collection of the herbarium, and led the development of the five volume Vascular Plants of the Pacific Northwest. He was also able to secure $100,000 for a new greenhouse, which was the start of today’s greenhouse complex on Stevens Way.

Among those attending the 100th anniversary celebration were a number of emeritus faculty who have served as department chairs between 1962 and the late 1980s: Richard Walker, 1962-71 and Art Kruckeberg, 1971-77. Other heads of the department during that period were H. Weston Blaser, acting, 1964-65; Walter Halperin, acting, 1977-78; and Larry Bliss, 1978-87.

In this era enrollment in science courses, including biology, increased sharply. Botany and zoology, in collaboration with other biological science departments, initiated new biology courses. By 1970 demand was so great that an Office of Biology Education was established.

The large enrollment increases necessitated increases in botany faculty as well, Walker writes. And in the early 1960s the upper floors of Johnson Hall were bursting. Walker was chair of the UW planning and building committee when the legislature finally approved funds for a new biology building. The result was Hitchcock Hall, named for the former chairman, that was occupied by part of the botany faculty in 1981 and ’82.

The two chairs since the late ’80s have been Melinda Denton, who served from 1987 until her death in 1994, and Joe Ammirati, the chair today. Ammirati says the department continues to strive to integrate teaching and research focusing on important questions and problems in plant biology, ranging from ecology to plant biotechnology. Faculty and staff value their role in teaching and the undergraduate biology program, and continue to extend their interests across varied units including zoology, genetics and forestry.

Walker welcomes additional information to add to the department history. He can be reached at 685-2078 or rbw@u.washington.edu.