David Hunt Linder papers

David Hunt Linder was born in Brookline, Massachusetts on September 24, 1899, to John Farlow Linder and Mary Louise Linder (née Hunt). He spent most of his early childhood in Canton, Massachusetts where the family home had a conservatory, greenhouse, and vegetable and flower gardens. Linder’s father was an enthusiastic amateur botanist and horticulturist. His great-uncle was Harvard mycologist William Gilson Farlow. Both men encouraged Linder’s early interest in botany.

Linder attended the Noble and Greenough School for Boys in Dedham. He entered Harvard College in 1917 and completed a B.A. in 1921. With the help of Farlow’s widow, Lilian, he traveled to Europe that summer and resumed his studies at Harvard in the fall. He was awarded an M.A. in 1922 and worked as a field assistant to Merritt Lyndon Fernald in Nova Scotia during the summer. Linder spent the next academic year studying fungi in British and Dutch Guiana and the British West Indies on a Sheldon Traveling Fellowship. He completed his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1926.

Linder returned to the United States after several months in Liberia and the Belgian Congo with the Harvard African Expedition and was offered a position as instructor in botany at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He held this position from 1927-1931 and also worked as a mycologist at the Missouri Botanical Garden. He married Elinor Alberts, an orchidologist at the Garden, in 1928.

At the urging of William Henry Weston, Linder returned in 1931 to Harvard to become instructor in cryptogamic botany. He and Elinor settled in Canton and he began his curatorship of the Farlow Herbarium the next year. During his 14 years as curator, Linder was responsible for significantly increasing the herbarium and library collections. He continued his field research on summer collecting trips with the Mycological Society of America. A year after Elinor’s death in 1938 Linder remarried and moved to Wakefield with his second wife, Dorothy M. Flannigan.

Linder was internationally known for his research, in particular his monographic studies of the conidial fungi. He contributed to more than 40 papers and founded the journal “Farlowia” in 1943. Linder was a member of the New England and Torrey Botanical Clubs as well as of several scientific societies. He suffered a heart attack and died on November 10, 1946.

Sources

Rusden PL. 1947. David Hunt Linder: September 24, 1899-November 10, 1946. Mycologia. 39(2):133-144.

Weston WH. 1947. David Hunt Linder. Farlowia. 3(2):141-154.