St. John, Harold

Biographical History

Harold St. John was an American botanist and taxonomist known for his book, List and Summary of the Flowering Plants of the Hawaiian Islands. He was born in 1892 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1917. St. John was a well-known professor of Botany at University of Hawaii where he served as chair of the Botany Department from 1929-1958 and was associate director of the Manoa Arboretum (now known as Lyon Arboretum) from 1953-1957. University of Hawaii’s Harold St. John Plant Science Laboratory building was dedicated on to St. John in 1971. St. John is also known for his work with the Foreign Economic Administration in search of cinchona, an ingredient in the malaria drug quinine, in the Andes in Colombia from 1944-1945. St. John is also known for his research on effects of radiation on vegetation in conjunction with the US Atomic Energy Commission.

Source

• Stark, Lawrence R. and Catale, Robert. (2011). Guide to the Harold St. John Papers, 1912-1957. Biographical note. Northwest Digital Archives. http://nwda-db.wsulibs.wsu.edu/documents/retrieve.asp?docname=NTE2cg319.xml#bioghistID
• Harold St. John (1892-1991). (2011). University of Hawaii. http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/1111
• Harold St. John – Career Synopsis and Bibliography. (1973). Pacific Science, 33(4), 435-447.

Related entities

University of Hawaii at Manoa: He was a professor of Botany at University of Hawaii.

Birth Date

1892

Death Date

1991

Topic

Botany

Form/Genre

Personal name

Occupation

Botanists