WILLIAM GILSON FARLOW 

 1844-1919 



By William Albert Setchell 



William Gilson Farlow was born in Boston, Mass., on December 17, 1844. He was the 

 son of John Smith Farlow and Nancy Wight (Blanchard) Farlow. He received his early 

 education in the public schools, both of the grammar and high school grades. He entered 

 Harvard University in 1862 and received the degree of B. A. in 1866. He entered the Harvard 

 Medical School in November, 1867, and received the degree of M. D. in May, 1870. He was 

 appointed assistant to Asa Gray, Fisher professor of natural history in Harvard University, 

 in July of 1870, continuing in this position for two years. In June, 1872, he sailed for Europe, 

 where he traveled and studied for somewhat over two years, returning to America in the 

 summer of 1874. In the same year he received the appointment of assistant professor of 

 botany at Harvard, with the particular field of cryptogamic botany, giving instruction both 

 at Cambridge and in the newly established Bussey Institution at Jamaica Plain. In 1879 

 he was appointed professor of cryptogamic botany in Harvard University, with teaching 

 entirely at Cambridge. He continued to teach until 1896, at which time he withdrew from 

 all work along this line except as to advising and assisting certain graduate students. He 

 married Miss Lilian Horsford, daughter of Eben Horsford, in 1900. He died June 3, 1919, 

 having served in the faculty of Harvard University as assistant professor and as professor for 

 45 years and having advanced to the position of senior member. 



As a boy and undergraduate student, William Gilson Farlow seems to have had strong 

 inclinations toward music and botany. In these respects he resembled his father, John Smith 

 Farlow, born in Boston in 1817 and educated there, who, besides being a successful man of 

 business, member of the Legislature of the State of Massachusetts, president of the Massa- 

 chusetts Reform Club, for many years president of the Newton Public Library, etc., was also 

 for a time president of the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston ; and, although with no critical 

 knowledge of botany, was very fond of plants, was a member of the Massachusetts Horticul- 

 tural Society as well as that of Newton and was awarded many prizes at their exhibitions. 

 During his boyhood and youth, William Gilson Farlow followed his father's likings for science 

 and the humanities and gave many evidences of the same alert and active mind as well as 

 capabilities for comprehensive grasp of fundamentals which characterized his later Life. He 

 was twice awarded the Franklin medals for scholarship in the Boston schools. In college he 

 was a member, and secretary for one year, of the Pierian Sodality, acting as pianist and several 

 times soloist at its public concerts. His unusual musical ability attracted the attention of his 

 instructors in music and J. K. Paine, professor of music at Harvard, urged him to take up 

 music as his chosen profession. He was an inimitable story-teller, even in his younger days, 

 and Likewise took part in amateur theatrical performances. He was also secretary and treas- 

 urer of the O. K. Society in his junior year. He was a member of the Harvard Natural History 

 Society and curator of its herbarium, and his scientific attainments were held in high esteem 

 by his classmates and fellow collegians as well as by his instructors. He was elected secretary 

 of his class at senior class election. He was accustomed to explain his habit of casting quick 

 glances from side to side and slightly upward by saying most humorously that when he was 

 a freshman he was much smaller than he was later on in life and that the sophomores used to 

 throw water out of the second-story windows on the freshmen as they passed the dormitories. 

 Consequently, in watching out for the sophomores at their windows he acquired a Lifelong 

 habit. At graduation, filing answers to questions asked by the class, he stated that he had 

 "no definite plans for life." 



1 



