Henry N. Andrews
University of Connecticut
June 15, 1910 - March 3, 2002
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Scientific Discipline: Plant Biology Membership Type:
Emeritus
(elected 1975)
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Henry N. Andrews, Jr., was a pioneer in North American paleobotany. His explorations of past plant life, especially in the structure, development, and reproductive biology of Devonian and Carboniferous plants, provided foundations for paleoecological and evolutionary studies. Andrews was noted, among other accomplishments, for his discovery of determinate growth in lepidodendrid trees, his seminal interpretations of early seed structure and of the evolutionary origin of the integument, his advocacy of the significance of seed ferns in gymnosperm evolution toward flowering plants, and his exploration and evolutionary studies of Devonian plants from the high Canadian Arctic, Maritime Canada, Maine, and West Virginia. His books included Ancient Plants and the World They Lived In (1947), Studies in Paleobotany (1961), and The Fossil Hunters (1980).
Andrews received a B.S. in 1934 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his M.S. (1937) and Ph.D. (1939) from Washington University in St. Louis. He became a faculty member at Washington University in 1940 and in 1947 he complemented his academic efforts by serving as a paleobotanist at the Missouri Botanical Garden. In 1964 Andrews left St. Louis to join the faculty of the University of Connecticut at Storrs, where he served until retirement in 1975. Throughout his long and productive research years, Andrews also was an administrator—working, for example, as assistant to the director at the Missouri Botanical Garden and as head of the Departments of Botany both at Washington University and the University of Connecticut. But whether as researcher, naturalist, explorer, educator, administrator, historian, fossil hunter, or writer, colleagues widely considered him one of the 20th century’s most positive and inspirational influences in paleobotany.
