Repository: UIHistories Project: Illio - 1895 [PAGE 12]

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Gbomas 3obnatban aSurrill

Was born in Pittstield, Mass., April 25, 1839. In 1S4S his father with his family moved to Stephen* son county, 111. He graduated from the Illinois State Normal University in 1865, and at once became superintendent of the city schools of Urbana, 111., which position he held until April, 1868, when closing- the Urbana high school for the year, he became instructor in the Illinois Industrial University, then just founded. The following* fall he formally made assistant professor in Natural positio profespOSltl ofbot pondi for the next twelve years, and was during* most of that time Dean of the College of Natural Science* In 1878 he became Botanist of the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History. He went in 1867 to the Rocky Mountains as botanist of a scientific expedition of which Major J. W. Powell was chief. In 1879 he made a collecting* trip to Mexico in the interest of the University, in company with one of his colleagues, Professor Taft. In 1882, he was appointed Vice-President of the University, which office he filled until 1892. From 1888 to the present time, he served as Horticulturist and Botanist of the Agricultural Experiment Station. Since 1889 he has been ActingRegent of the University. He has belonged to a number of scientific societies at home and abroad.

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He was at one time President of the Illinois State Horticultural Society, and again of the American Society of Microscopists; was Vice-President of the American Horticultural Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Section of Biology. He has received the honorary degrees of A. M., Northwestern University, Evanston; Ph. D., Chicago University (old), and L L . D., Northwestern University, Evanston. Professor Burrill early adopted his chief specialties, Cryptogamic Botany and the Parasitic Diseases of Plants. He was the first among American investigators to give special attention to the latter subject. It is probably true that his students were the first in America to have regular laboratory work with compound microscopes and equipments for the study of minute plants and plant tissues. His writings have mostly been confined to reports upon his investigations, published in the transactions of the Board of Trustees of the University, in the volumes of the State Department of Agriculture, in the Bulletins of the State Laboratory of Natural History, and in the trans, tions of Scientific Societies. He edited the biennial reports of the University from 1874-1886. Probably his pamphlets upon "Bacteria" (1882), and that upon the "Parasitic Fungi of Illinois" (1885 t< 1887), have attracted the most attention. H< elaborated the Erysipheae for Ellis & Kverharfa "Pyrenomycetes of North America" (1892).