Richard Thornton Fisher
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Harvard College (AB, 1898)
Richard Thornton Fisher | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | November 9, 1876 |
| Died | June 9, 1934 (aged 57) |
| Education | Yale Forest School (MF, 1903) Harvard College (AB, 1898) |
| Occupations | Forester, educator |
| Employer | Harvard University (1903–34) |
| Known for | Director of the Harvard Forest |
| Mother | Ellen Thayer Fisher |
Richard Thornton Fisher (November 9, 1876 – June 9, 1934) was an American forester, silviculturist, and educator who taught on the faculty of Harvard University and served as the founding director of the Harvard Forest from 1907 until his death in 1934. The Fisher Museum at the Harvard Forest was named in his honor.
Fisher was born on November 9, 1876, in Brooklyn, New York. He was one of three children and the only son of Edward Thornton Fisher, a schoolteacher and headmaster, and Ellen Thayer Fisher, a botanical illustrator. Richard's uncle was the artist Abbott Handerson Thayer. Growing up, Richard often spent summer vacations with his uncle in Dublin, New Hampshire, where his experiences drew him toward natural history as a career. He completed his college preparatory education at the Harvard School in Chicago and went on to receive his AB from Harvard University in 1898.[1][2]
Expected to become an English teacher, he instead spent the summer of 1898 with a United States Geological Survey team collecting specimens on Mount Shasta, where he worked with Clinton Hart Merriam and met Gifford Pinchot, who recruited him to work at the United States Division of Forestry. Fisher spent the next five years working as a field assistant except for leaves of absence to study for his Master of Forestry degree at Yale Forest School, completing his studies in 1902 and graduating in 1903. Also in 1903, he studied abroad in Germany, learning the forestry practices there.[1][2][3] He contributed to two US Bureau of Forestry bulletins published in 1903, The Woodlot: A Handbook for Owners of Woodlands in Southern New England (coauthored with Henry S. Graves)[4] and The Redwood (with Hermann von Schrenk and Andrew Delmar Hopkins).[5]
