Benjamin Smith Barton

Benjamin Smith Barton (1766 to 1815) was an American botanist, naturalist and physician, one of the first professors of natural history in the United States, who built the largest collection of botanical specimens in the country. He studied at York Academy in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and at the College of Philadelphia School of Medicine, and later studied in Edinburgh; he never contradicted a public belief that he earned a medical degree at Göttingen, though no such record exists. Returning to Philadelphia in 1789 he practised medicine, was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians in 1790, and the same year succeeded Adam Kuhn as professor of natural history and botany at the College of Philadelphia, which merged with the University of Pennsylvania the next year. In 1803 he published Elements of botany, the first American textbook on botany. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1789, served as president of the Philadelphia Medical Society from 1808 to 1815 and was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1812.