Rolla M. Tryon Jr.

Rolla Milton Tryon Jr.
Botanist Rolla Milton Tryon Jr.
Born	August 26, 1916 Chicago, Illinois, United States
Died	August 20, 2001(2001-08-20) (aged 84)
Nationality	American
Fields	Botany
Institutions	Gray Herbarium, Harvard University
Alma mater	University of Chicago Harvard University
Author abbrev. (botany)	R.M.Tryon
Spouse	Alice F. Tryon

Rolla Milton Tryon Jr. (August 26, 1916 – August 20, 2001) was an American botanist who specialized in the systematics and evolution of ferns and other spore-dispersed plants (pteridology). His particular focus and interest lay in two areas, historical biogeography of ferns and the taxonomy of tropical American ferns.

Rolla Milton Tryon Jr. was born August 26, 1916 in Chicago. His father was an American history and education professor at the University of Chicago.

Tryon's first scientific paper was published in 1934 (at the age of 18) on the ferns in Chesterton, Indiana where his family’s summer cottage was located. In 1935, he received his A.A. degree and in 1937 his B.S., both from the University of Chicago. He enrolled in the University of Wisconsin for a Ph.M., graduating in 1938. Then, at Harvard, earning he earned both his M.S. in 1940 and Ph.D. in 1941 working with Merritt Lyndon Fernald and Charles Alfred Weatherby on ferns in the genera Pteridium and Doryopteris.

During World War II, he worked as a lab technician in the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After the war, he returned to teach at Dartmouth College. then at the University of Wisconsin, where he met his future wife and lifelong collaborator, Alice Faber, a student at the time. In 1947, Tryon joined the faculty at Washington University in Saint Louis as an Associate Professor of Botany and became assistant curator in the herbarium of the Missouri Botanical Garden.