A history of research in Compositae : early beginnings to the Reading Meeting ( 1975 )

The magnitude of the work of the great students of the Compositae in the 19 and early 20 centuries is astonishing, both in the quality and scope of their research, as well as in the great number of systematic treatments and floras they produced. Their achievements go beyond exceptional, however, when they are seen in the context of the technology that these workers had available at the time. What follows is an attempt to gather and tie together many scattered pieces of information on their lives, work, and ideas, and to pay tribute to those individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the field. We are grateful to these men of science; their work has enabled us to see and understand the most diverse and successful plant family on Earth. This chapter covers notable synantherologists up to the 1975 conference held at Reading; a two-volume work that resulted from this meeting was published in 1977 (Heywood et al. 1977). The scientists are discussed in chronological order of the date of their major contribution^) to our understanding of Compositae.