George Lincoln Goodale

George Lincoln Goodale (August 3, 1839 – April 12, 1923) was an American botanist and the first director of Harvard’s Botanical Museum (now part of the Harvard Museum of Natural History). It was he who commissioned the making of the University's legendary Glass Flowers collection.

Goodale was born in Saco, Maine. He graduated from Amherst College in 1860 and from Harvard Medical School in 1863, after which he practiced in Portland, Maine, until 1867.

Goodale became professor of natural science and applied chemistry at Bowdoin. In 1872, he was appointed instructor in botany and University lecturer on vegetable physiology at Harvard, and advanced to assistant professor of the latter subject a year later. In 1878, he became a professor of botany and the Fisher professor of natural science, a chair formerly held by Asa Gray.

At some point during his career as a Harvard/Radcliffe Professor, Goodale taught avid Botany student Mary Lee Ware - born to the Elizabeth Cabot Lee (from then on Elizabeth C. Ware) and Dr. Charles Eliot Ware; a twist of fate that would turn critical later. After 1879, Goodale served as the first director of Harvard's Botanical Museum, but filling it was a slight problem for, at that time, Harvard was the global center of botanical study. As such, Goodale wanted the best, but the only used method was showcasing pressed and carefully labeled specimens — a methodology that offered a twofold problem: being pressed, the specimens were two-dimensional and tended to lose their color. Hence they were hardly the ideal teaching tools. However, Harvard had recently procured several glass marine invertebrates made by German glass artists Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka and, upon seeing them, Professor Goodale realized that glass flowers would solve his problem as, being glass, they were both three-dimensional and would retain their color. The only issue lay in convincing the Blaschkas to undertake such a project and how to fund it. The former took some time - and an advance payment of 200 marks - to accomplish, but eventually the famed glass artists agreed to send test-models to the U.S. and, although damaged in customs, the fragments convinced Goodale that Blaschka glass art was a more than worthy educational investment.

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