| Katharine Brandegee was an American botanist most often associated with California flora. Through her prominence and quality of work, she also helped to elevate the the reputation of the western professional botanical community to be on a par with the eastern states. After the death of her first husband, in 1878 she earned her medical degree from University of California, San Francisco, though she practiced medicine on a limited basis only between 1878 and 1882. First studying botany under Hans Behr, she joined the herbarium at California Academy of Sciences to work alongside Albert Kellogg, whom she replaced as curator upon his retirement in 1883. Soon, she established the Bulletin of the California Academy of Sciences as well as the botanical journal Zoe. She married surveyor and fellow plant collector Townshend Brandegee in 1889, who co-collected with her on many trips. She helped launch the career of Alice Eastwood by sharing her salary to make her joint curator in 1892 and eventually curator when she and her husband moved to San Diego two years later. There the Brandegees established an herbarium and San Diego's first botanical garden on their property. Their personal herbarium of some 76,000 specimens was donated (or possibly sold) in 1906 to University of California, Berkeley, when the pair moved to Berkeley. She and her husband lived out their final years associated with that herbarium. |
Wikipedia bio