William Lawrence White papers

William Lawrence White was born May 29, 1908, in Salina, Pennsylvania, and spent his childhood on his family's farm. He attended Pennsylvania State College where his professors included James W. Sinden and Frank D. Kern. He focused his studies on fungi, and he soon collected a large number of fungi for his own personal herbarium. He received a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1940.

White first began work at Harvard's Farlow Herbarium in 1940 as assistant curator of fungi. He also assisted on work for the Bibliographic Index of North American Fungi. He married Mary Rebecca Old, a graduate student at Radcliffe College, in October 1942 and they later had two children.

In 1943, White turned his efforts to helping the military deal with the problem of molds and mildews destroying supplies in tropical areas. He worked first for the Chemical Warfare Development Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later in Philadelphia for the Quartermaster Research and Development Laboratories of the U.S. Army. For a period in 1945 to 1946, he served as mycologist for the Air Technical Service Command Tropical Science Mission.

In 1948, White returned to Harvard where he served as director of the Farlow Library and Herbarium and associate professor of botany. He was instrumental in developing a working research laboratory to supplement the resources of the Farlow. White was also involved in many mycological and botanical organizations, including serving as chairman of the Microbiological Section of the Botanical Society of America. His own research resulted in a large number of publications, including monographs, on fungi and applied mycology, especially about the deterioration of textiles caused by fungi. White died on July 31, 1952, after a car accident.

References:

Harvard University Gazette, March 14, 1953, Vol. XLVIII, Number 25, p. 175-176. Harvard University Press Release, July 31, 1952.