Author: Bigelow, Jacob
Biography:
BIGELOW, Jacob (1787-1879: WBIS)
An influential physician and botanist, "the first nativeborn botanist to collect and describe the fauna of New England thoroughly" (ANBO) and a reformer of medical practice who opposed extreme interventions. He was born in Sudbury MA to Jacob and Elizabeth (Wells) Bigelow, graduated from Harvard in 1806 and studied medicine there and at the University of Pennsylvania. He was appointed lecturer in materia medica and botany at Harvard in 1815 and made Professor in 1817--at which time he married Mary Scollay, with whom he had five children. At Harvard he also held simultaneously the Rumford Professorship in the Application of Science to the Useful Arts and published in that area as well. He died in Boston in 1879. (ANBO 3 Dec. 2017; Appleton) HJ