Charles Edwin Bessey

Charles Edwin Bessey (1845–1915) was an American botanist. He was born at Milton, Wayne County, Ohio. He graduated in 1869 at the Michigan Agricultural College. Bessey also studied at Harvard University under Asa Gray, in 1872 and in 1875–76. He was professor of botany at the Iowa Agricultural College from 1870 to 1884. In 1884, he was appointed professor of botany at the University of Nebraska and became head dean there in 1909. He also served as Chancellor of the University of Nebraska from 1888 to 1891 and again from 1899 to 1900. He served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1911. His arrangement of flowering plants taxa, with focus on the evolutionary divergence of primitive forms, is...