American surveyor and botanist from Franklinton, Ohio. William Sullivant was a pioneer American bryologist and both the original name of the American Bryological and Lichenological Society (the Sullivant Moss Society) and the Saxifragiaceae genus Sullivantia Torr. and A.Gray bear his name.

Schooled in Kentucky, Sullivant attended Ohio University in Athens before going on to Yale University, from which he graduated in 1823. The death of his father, however, forced him to abandon an academic career at this time in order to look after the family estate and he began a career as a surveyor and engineer. It was not until he was about 30 years of age that Sullivant took an interest in studying and collecting plants, beginning with the flowering plants of the Ohio region and in particular the grasses and sedges. His first publication, "A Catalogue of Plants, Native or Naturalised, in the Vicinity of Columbus, Ohio" was brought out in 1840, but not long afterwards his attention turned to the mosses and liverworts. Travelling through the Alleghany Mountains from Maryland to Georgia in 1843, he published an exsiccatae from his journey and soon produced "Contributions to the Bryology and Hepaticology of North America" in two parts in 1846 and 1849. Sullivant also contributed a large section on the mosses and liverworts to Asa Gray's Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States. Perhaps his crowning achievement, however, was his Icones Muscorum (1864), replete with 129 copper plates it contained the description and illustration of most mosses native to eastern North America.

Sullivant was married three times (to Jane Marshall, Eliza G. Wheeler and Caroline E. Sutton) and was awarded an honorary LLD from Gambier College, Ohio. He died of pneumonia in 1873. His original phanerogam herbarium of some 10,000 specimens was sent to Asa Gray in 1868, subsequently becoming part of the collections of the Gray Herbarium (GH). Original bryophytes are at the Farlow Herbarium (FH). Sullivant was the determiner of bryophyte exsiccate from Cuba collected by Charles Wright, material of which is at BM. Material was also bequeathed to BM with the herbarium of N.B. Ward (1869). Bryophyte exsiccatae at K were transferred to BM after 1960 under the terms of the Morton Agreement.

Sources:
Asa Gray, 1877, "William Starling Sullivant" National Academy of Science Biographical Memoirs, 1: 277-285
H.B. Humphrey, 1961, Makers of North American Botany: 238-241
A.M. Smith, 1905, "William Starling Sullivant", The Bryologist, 8(1): 1-3.