Director of Botanical Research
Centurion, 1908–1958
Born 16 March 1865 in Liberty, Indiana
Died 22 February 1958 in Carmel, California
Proposed by N. L. Britton and William Gilman Thompson
Elected 1 February 1908 at age forty-two
Seconder of:
Century Memorial
Daniel T. MacDougal was born in Liberty, Indiana, and graduated from DePauw University in 1890 as a bachelor of science. In 1891 he took the M.S. degree at Purdue; and then he went to study botany at Tübingen and Leipzig and Amsterdam. From 1899 to 1905 he was director of New York Botanical Garden; and in 1956 that institution awarded him the only Certificate of Distinguished Service that it has ever issued.
MacDougal was probably the leading botanist of his time. He lived to be 93 [sic: 92]; and he was known and honored in all the capitals of Western Europe. He was a prolific author of treatises on the abstruse physiology of plants and trees; he knew about the mechanics of osmosis, and chlorophyll, and about the cycles in weather and tree growth, and about desert ecology; and he was recognized as the leading authority in these matters.
About 1910 he established himself at Carmel, California, and that was his headquarters the rest of his life. Until 1933 he worked as director of botanical research for the Carnegie Institution of Washington; and then he retired, at 68. But he kept right on working at Carmel and in the Arizona desert, writing monographs, conducting researches, and receiving honors and degrees and medals from all over Europe and America. He was affectionately known in California as the “Grand Old Man of the Monterey Peninsula,” and he was a source of pride to the whole State. He was a spry, energetic man with a twinkling eye and a genial personality, and his keen intellect and wide interests were a stimulation to the old and an inspiration to the young.
George W. Martin
1959 Century Association Yearbook
