Joseph Horace Faull papers

Joseph Horace Faull was born on May 3, 1870 in L'Anse, Michigan, to James and Catherine Faull (née Bennetts). Faull grew up on the Canadian shore of Lake Ontario and graduated from the University of Toronto in 1898. He taught mathematics at Albert College in Belleville, Ontario, for the next two years and returned to the University of Toronto to study biology in 1900.

The following year Faull went to Harvard as an Austin Fellow to study mycology with Roland Thaxter. He married Annie Bell Sargent in 1903. She was a doctoral candidate at Johns Hopkins University at the time and gave up her own career when they married. The couple had three children, one of whom, Anna, was also a botanist.

Faull received a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1904 and accepted a professorship at the University of Toronto. From 1909 to 1910 he spent a sabbatical year at the Forstbotanisches Institut at the University of Munich.

Faull continued with his studies at the College of Forestry at Syracuse University. He also taught summer courses for several years at Cornell and Harvard. Throughout his career, he traveled extensively in the eastern United States and Canada to study forests, eventually expanding his collecting to the Pacific Northwest, California, Mexico, and Panama.

In 1928 Faull left the University of Toronto to become Professor of Forest Pathology at Harvard. Most of his time was spent studying pathology at the laboratory and greenhouse built to his specifications at the Arnold Arboretum. He was assisted by graduate student Grant Dooks Darkeron on his primary area of research tree pathogens.

Faull retired in 1940 but continued to work and publish into the 1950s. He died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts on June 30, 1961.

Sources

Faull AF. 1962. Joseph Horace Faull, 1870-1961. J. Arnold Arbor. 43(3): 223-233.