GEORGE FRANCIS ATKINSON^ 
W. G. Farlow, Roland Thaxter, and L. H. Bailey 
Professor George Francis Atkinson died November 14, 1918, in a 
hospital at Tacoma, Washington, of pneumonia resulting from influenza. 
He had been on the Coast since September, collecting fungi. It is thought 
that he contracted influenza more readily from exposure and overwork, 
as he found the collecting unusually attractive and worked long hours with 
great energy. 
Professor Atkinson was a botanist of wide reputation, connected for the 
latter part of his life with Cornell University. In June, 1917, he was re- 
lieved of teaching and administrative work at Cornell, continuing on a 
research professorship until the regular period of retirement should have 
been reached. Early in the season of 191 8 he took the field in the eastern 
and southern states, expecting to complete the year in extensive collecting 
in the Pacific Coast region. He was devoting himself to a monograph of 
fleshy fungi, expecting to publish in several volumes. 
In recognition of his mycological and other work, he was elected to 
membership in the National Academy of Sciences at the spring meeting 
of 1918. He was an associate editor of the Botanical Gazette, fellow of the 
American Association for th« Advancement of Science, member of the Amer- 
ican Philosophical Society and of the national botanical societies, having been 
president of the Botanical Society of America 1907 to 1909. He was a 
member of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi. 
He was born January 26, 1854, at Raisinville, Michigan, and entered 
Olivet College in 1878, later going to Cornell where he received a degree 
with the class of 1885. He was assistant and later associate professor of 
entomology and zoology at the University of North Carolina, going there 
in 1885. He took the chair of botany and zoology and became botanist of 
the Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of South Carolina; 
in 1889 he became professor of biology, and biologist at the Experiment 
Station, in the Alabama Polytechnic Institute. In 1892 he was called to 
Cornell as assistant professor of crypt ogamic botany, becoming associate 
professor in 1893, and head of the department of botany in 1896 in succes- 
sion to Professor A. N. Prentiss. 
At Cornell he was eminently successful as a teacher of advanced students, 
of whom a large number are now scattered over the world. 
Professor Atkinson was versatile as well as industrious and energetic, 
and his numerous botanical writings cover a large field. Besides his educa- 
^ Prepared at the request of the council of the Botanical Society of America. 
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