Department of Botany records

Instruction in botany began at the University in the early 1870s as part of the curriculum in the general sciences. After the establishment of the Minnesota Geological and Natural History Survey (MGNHS) in 1872 by an act of the state legislature that placed authority for survey administration under the University of Minnesota Board of Regents, instruction in botany was assigned to the Professor of Geology and Mineralogy, Newton Horace Winchell. Winchell also served concurrently as the State Geologist and director of the MGNHS. Winchell was relieved of teaching duties in 1878 to focus solely on the work of the survey, and Christopher Webber Hall assumed responsibility for botanical coursework beginning with the 1878-1879 Academic Year.

In 1887 Hall was granted $300 by the Board of Regents to hire an additional instructor of botany, and Conway MacMillan was appointed to the position. MacMillan served as an instructor and assistant to Hall until 1890 when he was promoted to the title of Assistant Professor of Botany, and was appointed the title of State Botanist of the MGNHS. In 1891, Hall was relieved of botany instruction, and MacMillan was made a full Professor of Botany (Board of Regents Executive Committee Meeting Minutes, 1879-1888; 1889-1895).

Though not formally acknowledged by the Board of Regents, the formation of the Department of Botany is associated with the relocation of the science disciplines from the main University building (Old Main) to Pillsbury Hall in 1889. The early work of the department centered around MacMillan’s position as State Biologist for the survey, and was concerned with the collection and classification of botanical specimens to add to the Herbarium, established with the purchase of the John Sandberg Herbarium collection of 6,000 specimens in 1889.

In 1898, Josephine Tilden was appointed instructor of Botany making her the first female faculty member in the science disciplines. In the late 1890s, Tilden purchased a tract of land at the site of what today is known as Botanical Beach in the Juan de Fuca Provincial Park in British Columbia where she built the Minnesota Seaside Station (MSS). The station operated each summer from 1901-1907 with between 30-40 students, professors, and high school teachers in attendance each year.

In 1906, Conway MacMillan resigned as head of the department and left academia to pursue a career in advertising. In 1907, Frederic E. Clements, formerly of the University of Nebraska, was appointed to replace MacMillan. Clements’ research was focused on plants and their relation to the environment, which developed the department’s work in ecology. General instruction was conducted primarily by Ned L. Huff, who joined the faculty as an instructor 1906 and taught until his retirement in 1946. In 1915, William S. Cooper, who later became well known for his work to preserve Glacier Bay in Alaska and his studies of the Anoka Sand Plain, joined the department. In 1917, Clements resigned as chair and professor Carl Otto Rosendahl was named acting chairman.

The Botany department was removed from Pillsbury Hall upon the construction of the Botany Building, which was completed in 1926. In 1935 the department initiated a summer session at the Itasca Biological Station in Itasca State Park, an active program to this day.

In 1965 the department was removed from the College of Science, Literature and the Arts, and became part of newly formed College of Biological Sciences, along with Agricultural Biochemistry, Zoology, the Museum of Natural History, and the Dight Institute for Human Genetics. The department moved in to the Biological Sciences Center when the building opened in 1972.

In 1978 the plant physiology program, previously administered jointly by the College of Agriculture and the College of Biological Sciences, became part of the administrative oversight of the department. In 1988, the Department of Botany was renamed the Department of Plant Biology.

The following are a list of department chairmen and heads with their titles and length of term: