Mason Ellsworth Hale Jr
| Mason Ellsworth Hale, Jr. | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 23, 1928 |
| Died | April 23, 1990 (aged 61) |
| Known for | Taxonomy of lichens |
| Scientific career | |
| Author abbrev. (botany) | Hale |
Mason Ellsworth Hale, Jr. (September 23, 1929 – April 23, 1990) was one of the most prolific lichenologists of the 20th century. Many of his scholarly articles focused on the taxonomy of the family Parmeliaceae. Hale was one of the first lichen experts to incorporate secondary chemistry and technology such as computers and scanning electron microscopy into taxonomic work. Mason Hale published approximately two hundred articles and books on various aspects of lichen biology including taxonomy, anatomy, chemistry, and ecology. Hale also wrote several books aimed at education and increasing accessibility to lichens.
Mason Hale Jr. grew up on a farm outside of Winsted, Connecticut. He had an affinity towards biology from experiences from living on his family's farm. As an undergraduate, Hale wanted to be a linguist, but was not able to take specialized classes. Instead, he earned an undergraduate degree studying biology at Yale University, where he studied lichens under Alexander W. Evans, a bryophyte and lichen expert.
Hale earned his Masters and Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin–Madison under the supervision of prominent lichenologist John W. Thomson, an arctic lichen expert. For his master's degree, Hale studied the lichen flora of the Baffin Islands, located in northeastern Canada. He collected lichens on the island working with Pierre Dansereau, a prominent Canadian ecologist. The resulting publications from the Baffin Islands contained both a checklist of all species collected, and dichotomous keys. Baffin Island was the first of many expeditions around the world that Hale made to collect lichens.
For his Ph.D. Hale studied the lichens of southern Wisconsin. The paper, which was published in the journal Ecology, exemplifies Hale's ability to use technology to innovate new ideas. He studied how cryptogam communities (lichens and bryophytes) change with differing forest composition. He also examined host specificity of species. Hale found that there are different communities at the base of the tree compared to 1.3 meters high on the tree trunk. Another significant finding was that the cryptogamic community differed between habitats due to light and other stand level variables. This was an important study because it was one of the first lichen experiments that utilized statistics for ecological conclusions as opposed to observations. Also Hale placed the data for each tree on IBM punch cards to better analyze the data.
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