Asa Gray Award

Asa Gray
Asa Gray in 1870s
Born	(1810-11-18)November 18, 1810 Sauquoit, New York
Died	January 30, 1888(1888-01-30) (aged 77) Cambridge, Massachusetts
Nationality	United States of America
Fields	Botany
Influences	Amos Eaton Charles Darwin
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Asa Gray (November 18, 1810 – January 30, 1888) is considered the most important American botanist of the 19th century. His Darwiniana was considered an important explanation of how religion and science were not necessarily mutually exclusive.

As a professor of botany at Harvard University for several decades, Gray regularly visited, and corresponded with, many of the leading natural scientists of the era, including Charles Darwin, who held great regard for him. Gray made several trips to Europe to collaborate with leading European scientists of the era, as well as trips to the southern and western United States. He also built an extensive network of specimen collectors.

A prolific writer, he was instrumental in unifying the taxonomic knowledge of the plants of North America. Of Gray's many works on botany, the most popular was his Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, from New England to Wisconsin and South to Ohio and Pennsylvania Inclusive, known today simply as Gray's Manual. Gray was the sole author of the first five editions of the book and co-author of the sixth, with botanical illustrations by Isaac Sprague. Further editions have been published, and it remains a standard in the field. Gray also worked extensively on a phenomenon that is now called the "Asa Gray disjunction", namely, the surprising morphological similarities between many eastern Asian and eastern North American plants.

Gray was born in Sauquoit, New York, on November 18, 1810, to Moses Gray (b. February 26, 1786), then a tanner, and Roxanna Howard Gray (b. March 15, 1789). Born in the back of his father's tannery, Gray was the eldest of their eight children. Gray's paternal great-grandfather had arrived in Boston from Northern Ireland in 1718; Gray's Scotch-Irish Presbyterian ancestors had moved to New York from Massachusetts and Vermont after Shays' Rebellion. His parents married on July 30, 1809. Tanneries needed a lot of wood to burn, and the lumber supply in the area had been shrinking, so Gray's father used his profits to buy farms in the area, and in about 1823 sold the tannery and became a farmer.