EDWARD TUCKERMAN. 1 



On the 15th of March last, the Academy lost one of the 

 older and more distinguished members of the botanical section, 

 the lichenologist, Edward Tuckerman. 



He was born in Boston, December 7, 1817, was the eldest 

 son of a Boston merchant of the same name and of Sophia 

 (May) Tuckerman. He was prepared for college at the Bos- 

 ton Latin School, whence, in obedience to his father's choice 

 rather than of his own, he went to Union College at Schenec- 

 tady. Entering as a sophomore, he took his B. A. degree in 

 1837. He then entered the Harvard Law School, took his 

 degree in 1839, and remained in residence in Cambridge for 

 a year or two longer. In the year 1841 he went to Germany 

 and Scandinavia, going as far north as Upsala, devotiug him- 

 self, as in a subsequent visit, to philosophical, historical, and 

 botanical studies. On his return, in September, 1842, he 

 made, with the writer of this notice, a botanical excursion to 

 the White Mountains of New Hampshire, with which he was 

 already familiar. At the close of that or early in the following 

 year he took up his residence at Union College, proceeded to 

 the M. A. degree, and there prepared and privately published 

 one of the smaller, but noteworthy, of his botanical papers. 



In the year 1844 or 1845 he returned to Cambridge, and 

 in the autumn of 1846, in his twenty-ninth year, he became 

 again an undergraduate. Applying for admission to the in- 

 coming senior class, he remarked to President Quincy that 

 his father had broken the family tradition by sending him to 

 another college, and that he proposed to correct the mistake. 

 To the suggestion, that, being already an alumnus of the Law 

 School as well as of Union, the University would willingly 

 concede to him the earlier degrees he sought, he replied that 



1 Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, new 

 ser. xiii., 539. (1886.) 



