research effort and in a major way has been led by Barghoorn 

 and his students. Now we hear dates of three and one half billion 

 years and the suggestion of even older dates for the origin of life. 

 At the same time he was looking for cells and microorganisms in 

 those ancient rocks, Elso was also looking for evidence of 

 organic compounds that might have had their origin from living 

 organisms. In this he was following a natural spin-off from his 

 earlier interest in the degradation of organic materials by living 

 micro-organisms, a study in which he was engaged during World 

 War II under the auspices of the Office of Scientific Research 

 and Development and assigned to the Quartermaster Corps of 



the United States Army. 



Elso Barghoorn might very well have been a systematic bota- 

 nist had his early inclinations been followed. During his under- 

 graduate years, he worked as a student in the herbarium at 

 Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he received an A.B. 

 with honor in 1937. In applying to Harvard University for grad- 

 uate study, he corresponded with M. L. Fernald, expressing his 

 desire to do his thesis in taxonomic botany. He wrote Fernald, 

 "For some time I have been interested in the Ericaceae as a 

 group, and in particular those of the north-eastern United 

 States." However, when he did come to Harvard in the fall of 

 1937, he at first elected to study developmental morphology 

 under R. H. Wetmore who, upon learning of Elso's deep interest 

 in cell and wood structure, suggested the appropriate person to 

 work with would be I. W. Bailey. Thus the sponsorship through 

 his graduate years was influenced and Bailey became his major 



M 



and a Ph.D. in 1941. 



umme 



Garden and Research Laboratory in Cienfuegos, Cuba, Elso 



M 



sachusetts, beginning in the fall of 1 94 1 . One of his duties was to 

 oversee the care of the college herbarium. He became an Assist- 

 ant Professor in 1944, but was given a leave of absence to engage 

 in war research almost immediately. After the war he became 

 Assistant Professor at Harvard (1946-1949), Associate Profes- 



40 



