Lyman Bradford Smith (September 11, 1904 – May 4, 1997) was an American botanist. Smith was born in Winchester,

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

. He studied botany during the 1920s at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

and received his PhD from Harvard in 1930. Between 1928 and 1929, he worked for the first time in Brazil. Most of his life's work came to involve the taxonomy of the flowering plants of South America, in particular the bromeliads (''

Bromeliaceae The Bromeliaceae (the bromeliads) are a family of monocot flowering plants of about 80 genera and 3700 known species, native mainly to the tropical Americas, with several species found in the American subtropics and one in tropical west Africa, ...

''). Smith worked on the Bromeliaceae for the North American Flora published by the American botanist

Nathaniel Lord Britton Nathaniel Lord Britton (January 15, 1859 – June 25, 1934) was an American botanist and taxonomist who co-founded the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, New York. Early life Britton was born in New Dorp in Staten Island, New York to Jasper ...

, volume 19, no. 2 (1938). Smith was a world authority on ''

Begoniaceae Begoniaceae is a family of flowering plants with two genera and about 2040 species occurring in the subtropics and tropics of both the New World and Old World. All but one of the species are in the genus '' Begonia''. There have been many recent ...

'' and also worked with ''

Velloziaceae Velloziaceae is a family of monocotyledonous flowering plants. The APG II system, of 2003 (unchanged from the APG system, 1998), also recognizes this family, and assigns it to the order Pandanales. Relationships and evolution By contrast to o ...

'' and numerous other plant families. He was a curator in the Smithsonian Institution's Department of Botany from 1947 until his retirement in 1974, but continued to work in the United States National Herbarium as an emeritus curator almost until his death in

Manhattan, Kansas Manhattan is a city and county seat of Riley County, Kansas, United States, although the city extends into Pottawatomie County, Kansas, Pottawatomie County. It is located in northeastern Kansas at the junction of the Kansas River and Big Blue ...

, in 1997.

Works

:''This list may be incomplete.'' * ''The Bromeliaceae of Brazil'', 1955 * ''The Bromeliaceae of Colombia'', 1957 * ''Begoniaceae'', 1986

References

*Biography

* Taxon, Vol. 46(4) (1997): 819–824. * Robert Zander, Fritz Encke, Günther Buchheim, Siegmund Seybold (editor): Handwörterbuch der Pflanzennamen. 13th ed. Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart 1984, .

External links

List of plants described by Lyman Bradford Smith (IPNI)Lyman Bradford Smith Papers
from the

Smithsonian Institution Archives Smithsonian Libraries and Archives is an institutional archives and library system comprising 21 branch libraries serving the various Smithsonian Institution museums and research centers. The Libraries and Archives serve Smithsonian Institutio ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Lyman Bradford 1904 births 1997 deaths Botanists with author abbreviations Botanists active in South America Harvard University alumni Smithsonian Institution people People from Winchester, Massachusetts 20th-century American botanists