| A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project | | N |
| Corresponded with author | | N |
| Notable | | Y |
| Birth | Dec 16, 1859 | Detroit, MI, USA1 |
| Graduation | 1882 | University of Michigan, MI, USA |
| Occupation | between Oct, 1891 and 1925 | Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA, Professor of Botany; was at Univ. of Indiana prior; a specialist in mosses and ferns |
| Author | | A university text-book of botany
Elements of structural and systematic botany, for high schools and elementary college courses
Lectures on the evolution of plants
Plant life and evolution
The Eusporangiatae; the comparative morphology of the Ophioglossaceae and Marattiaceae
The structure and development of mosses and ferns (Archegoniatae) |
| Note | Jan, 1952 | Memorial Resolution Douglas H. Campbell (1859 - 1952)
On January 23rd of this year died Dr. Douglas Houghton Campbell, the last surviving link between the present and the founding days of the University, and a member of the "Old Guard," the first faculty of Stanford. Dr. Campbell was born in Detroit, Michigan on December 16, 1859, thus being at the time of his death slightly more than 93 years old. He had been retired from the service of the University for more than 28 years, during which time he maintained his residence on the campus. He came to Stanford for the opening of the University in 1891, so that his connection with this institution spanned more than 62 years. He graduated from the University of Michigan with the degree of Ph.M. in 1882. He received the degree of Ph.D. from the same university in 1886. In 1932 his achievements in his chosen field of Botany were recognized by the same university with the award of the honorary degree of LL.D. He taught Biology in the Detroit High School during the period from 1882 to 1886. From 1886 to 1888 he spent two years at the Universities of Bonn, Tübingen and Berlin. From 1888 until 1891 he was Professor of Botany at the University of Indiana from whence Dr. Jordan came to the presidency of Stanford University, bringing with him Dr. Campbell as one of the group of men composing the first faculty, every one of whom achieved distinction in his
chosen field. He was head of the Department of Botany here until his retirement in 1925. He never married. Dr. Campbell was a botanist whose interests were directed especially to the study of mosses and ferns and their relatives. An estimate of his work, prepared by Dr. William C. Steere of Stanford, is as follows: "Douglas Houghton Campbell, inspired by Hofmeister’s great studies on the higher cryptograms, and himself gifted with an inexhaustible research drive, became the leading American plant morphologist while still very young and maintained this position for a half century. His pioneer work, Mosses and Ferns, published in 1895, was based primarily on the
material he found in the Stanford University region when he assumed the chair of Botany here. This book, still used as a text, although it was really a report upon his original research, established his lasting reputation as a plant morphologist, a reputation that was enhanced by his later work. In his application of modern methods to the investigation of problems involving the structure, development, reproduction, and evolution of mosses and ferns, Campbell showed great imagination and was widely followed both in this country and abroad. His researches on the broader aspects of morphology, including plant distribution and evolution, are still of importance in their influence upon current botanical thought. Inspection of any modern textbook of botany will reveal a very considerable dependence on and reference to the investigations of the greatest
of American plant morphologists, D. H. Campbell." In addition to the book just mentioned he was the author of other texts, including Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany, published in 1890, and A University Textbook of Botany in 1902, and of many technical papers. His last book, Evolution in the Land Plants, was published in 1940.
Dr. Campbell was elected to the National Academy of Science and the American Philosophical Society, honors which are very sparingly distributed. He was a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and was a member of various other scientific societies in this country and abroad.
One who knew him personally cannot forbear to mention his abilities as a watercolorist. In his various travels about the world he kept a record composed of quick, but charming, watercolor sketches of objects and places that especially interested him, although he seems never especially to have cultivated the abilities displayed by these sketches. Douglas Campbell has been a familiar and beloved figure on the Stanford campus for many years. He will be remembered for his thoughtfulness and sympathetic understanding, for his Old World courtliness, for his charming stories of his many travels, his good humor and sense of proportion, and above all for his great dignity of person coupled with a sincerity that won respect from students and colleagues alike. With his passing we say our last goodbyes to the pioneer faculty of Stanford University, the Old Guard.
G. F. Ferris
J. G. Emerson
Richard W. Holm1 |
| Death | Feb 24, 1952 | Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA1 |
| Obituary | Feb 25, 1952 | NY Times1 |
| ParentsS | | the youngest of the six children of James Valentine Campbell and Cornelia Hotchkiss.
His father, a judge of the Supreme Court of Michigan, named the son after his long-time friend, the eminent geologist Douglas Houghton. |
| Biography | | A noted botany professor and one of the original 15 professors at Stanford University
Campbell's nearly two hundred publications derive ultimately from his consuming interest in the manner of evolution of the lower plants. Inspired as a youth by Wallace's The Malay Archipelago, Campbell set a course through the University of Michigan that eventually landed him a teaching position at Indiana University, where he came to the notice of David Starr Jordan. When Jordan left to take the first presidency at Stanford University Campbell followed and quickly established himself there, pursuing laboratory and field researches (especially in Indonesia) designed to investigate the phyletic origins of the land flora. He was aided in such investigations by his superior microscopal technique, gained partly through special studies in Germany in the late 1880s. Campbell's morphological analyses resulted in some lasting conclusions (for example, his linking of the ferns and liverworts through the genus Anthoceros); he became most widely known, however, through writing several successful textbooks that admirably related his more special interests to ecological and phytogeographical contexts.
Life Chronology
--born in Detroit, Michigan, on 16 December 1859.
--1882: M.A., University of Michigan
--1882-1886: botany teacher, Detroit High School
--1886: Ph.D. in botany, University of Michigan
--1886-1888: studies microscopic techniques in Germany
--1891: professor of botany, Indiana University
--1891-1925: head of the botany department, Stanford University
--1895: publishes his The Structure & Development of Mosses & Ferns (Archegoniatae)
--1899: publishes his Lectures on the Evolution of Plants
--1902: publishes his A University Text-book of Botany
--1906, 1912-1913, 1914: botanical collecting in the Dutch East Indies
--1910: made a member of the American Academy of Sciences
--1911: publishes his Plant Life and Evolution
--1913: president, Botanical Society of America
--1925: retires, but continues at Stanford as emeritus professor
--1926: publishes his An Outline of Plant Geography
--1930: president, Pacific section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
--1932: LL.D., University of Michigan
--1940: publishes his The Evolution of Land Plants (Embryophyta)
--dies at Palo Alto, California, on 24 February 1953.
For Additional Information, See:
--Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. 3 (1973).
--Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement Five 1951-1955 (1977).
--American National Biography, Vol. 4 (1999).
--Taxonomic Literature Suppl. III (1995).
--Biographical Memoirs, National Academy of Sciences 29 (1956): 45-63.
--Asa Gray Bulletin 2 (1953): 121-128.
* * * * *
Copyright 2007 by Charles H. Smith. All rights reserved.
http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/chronob/CAMP1859.htm |
| Notable | | Renowned botany professor of Stanford University. Middle name because Michigan state geologist Douglass Houghton was a friend of the family. |