Horace Mann Jr.

Horace Mann Jr. (1844-1868) was an American botanist.

Biography

Horace Mann Jr. was born in Boston on February 25, 1844. He was the son of education reformer Horace Mann. While attending the Lawrence Scientific School he took lessons in zoology with Louis Agassiz and in botany with Asa Gray. In 1864 he went on botanical surveys to the Hawaiian Islands with William Tufts Brigham, where they discovered more than 100 plant taxa new to science, including "Delissea lobata" or the genera "Platydesma" and "Alsinidendron". Species like "Diellia mannii" are named in his honour.

Back to the Lawrence Scientific School, Mann wrote his thesis about the Hawaiian flora with the title "Enumeratio of Hawaiian Plants" which was published in 1867. It was Asa Gray's hope that Horace Mann became his successor at the botanical garden and the botany department of the Harvard University in 1868 but Mann died of tuberculosis on November 11, 1868.

I addition to "Enumeratio of Hawaiian Plants" he wrote the manuscripts to several other works about the Hawaiian flora, including "Flora of the Hawaiian Islands" or "Analysis of the Hawaiian Flora" which were finished by William Tufts Brigham and published after Mann's death.

References

* [http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~gra00039 Mann, Horace, 1844-1868. Manuscripts by Horace Mann, 1860?-1868: A Guide]
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