(1895-1988)

For some time I have been thinking that I could send you in a day or two a sample page for your approval in the Farlow Icones. We are having Mr. Updike of the Merrymount Press prepare the estimates, and if they are at all within reason, I think we will have him do the work. He is reputed to be one of the finest commercial printers in America.

Letter from Carroll William Dodge to Edward Angus Burt May 4, 1928

 

 

 

 

C. W. Dodge was born on January 20, 1895 in Danby, Vermont. He earned his A.B. (1915) and M.A. (1916) in classics at Middlebury College, Vermont where he came under the influence of Edward Angus Burt. Upon completing his degrees Dodge followed Burt to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. There, as a Lachland Fellow, Dodge did research on various aspects of plant physiology and biochemistry to earn his doctorate (1918) under Benjamin M. Duggar.

Dodge served in the United States Army from 1918-1919. In the fall of 1919, he became an Instructor in Botany at Brown University. In 1920 he was appointed the Olney Assistant Professor of Botany and became the head of the department.

In 1921 Dodge was called to Harvard University as Instructor in Botany and was promoted to Assistant Professor and Curator of the Farlow Library and Herbarium in 1924. Dodge also served as Secretary of the Division of Biology. While at the Farlow from 1924-1931, Dodge oversaw the consolidation of the herbarium and library collections at 20 Divinity Avenue and doubled the herbarium collections. Some of these collections came from Dodge's many expeditions to the Gaspe Peninsula, Canada (1923) and Costa Rica (1929-1930).

It was during the mid-1920's that Dodge began to read about fungal diseases in humans, and developed a medical mycology course that was the first offered in the United States. In 1929-1930, Dodge studied tropical mycoses in Costa Rica on a Guggenheim Fellowship. Dodge received a second Guggenheim Fellowship to study in Europe and after his return in 1931, he became Professor of Botany at Washington University and Mycologist at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Dodge held both positions until his retirement in 1963. He then became Research Professor at the University of Vermont, Burlington.

Dodge 's lichenological studies were mainly taxonomic and floristic dealing with exotic floras. He became the American authority on tropical and Antarctic lichens. In a addition to two monographs, Dodge was the author of over seventy scholarly articles dating from 1918 to 1982.

Carroll William Dodge died in Vermont in 1988.