Canadian botanist at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Alice Eastwood, after whom the academy's herbarium is named, was responsible for its re-building after the earthquake and fire of 1906. The collection began with the types she had rescued from the old building before it burnt down and to it she added some 340,000 specimens, both from her own field work and as donations from her many friends within the botanical community.

Born in Toronto, Eastwood's mother died when she was just six years old and she was sent by her father to Oshawa Convent in Toronto. Her uncle, a physician and horticulturalist, initiated a love of plants in the young Alice and this interest was nurtured by the priest who looked after the convent's garden. In 1873 she was sent back to her father who had opened a store in Denver, Colorado, and despite having to work in order to keep her fathers failing business alive, she managed to attend high school and gained her diploma in 1879. For the following ten years Eastwood worked as a teacher in Colorado, living for the summers when she set out to explore the flora of the High Rockies and the south western part of Colorado. At this time she lived frugally and, with her father's fortunes also improved, was able to purchase property in Denver which eventually afforded her a small independent salary.

With her livelihood secure Eastwood quit her teaching job in order to pursue her love of botany. Her knowledge of the flora of Colorado had become well known (she was even responsible for guiding British naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace on his trip to that region), and in 1891 she visited botanist T.S. Brandegee and his curator wife Katherine at the California Academy of Sciences. The pair were so impressed that they offered Eastwood a position in the herbarium, to assist Katherine Brandegee in ordering the collection. In 1892 she took up the offer and moved to San Francisco. Two years later the Brandegees left the academy and Eastwood took over as curator. Fortunately, over the years that followed she separated out all of the 1,211 types in the herbarium so that come 1906, she was able to efficiently remove them from the partially ruined building. The specimens were on the top floor and, once she had found her way into the building, she and a colleague had to tackle six flights of ruined staircases. They made it by holding the railings and putting their feet in the rungs, packaging up the specimens and lowering them down to the floor of the museum. By the time they were done the building next door was on fire and she was unable to save any of her personal items or books, save for one lens. Eastwood set about re-collecting the plants which were lost in the fire and verifying the names of the types she had saved. Based at the University of California, Berkeley, she spent several years on the East Coast at Boston and the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University, before travelling to Europe in 1911 to visit collections in London and Paris. Finally, in 1912, she was asked to help in the reconstruction of the Academy of Sciences at its new location in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.

The project was not without its challenges, but Eastwood met them all with the strength of character she was famous for, and in 1916 the new building opened its doors. Working there until her official retirement at the age of 90 (although she retained her desk and the title curator emeritus until her death) she taught taxonomy classes and helped in the organisation and upkeep of the park's arboretum and Shakespeare Garden. Eastwood collected extensively throughout California, accompanying mountaineering groups such as the "The Hill Tribe" and the Cross Country Club in weekend exploration trips to the Tamalpais Mountains and the Sierra Nevada. One particularly impressive expedition was to the Yukon in 1914 in order to collect willows. Braving the late winter in an old mining hut (the kitchen floor was often covered in a foot of ice), as the summer began she stoically endured swarms of mosquitoes to gatherer all the specimens she required. During 1938 she travelled with close companion and assistant Tom Howell through the south western states to collect in the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Zion and the Painted Desert. Howell eventually took over from her as curator. Eastwood was never married although there seem to have been two men in her life whom she might have settled with. One died of tuberculosis and the other, geologist Grove Karl Gilbert, who she was due to marry in 1918, also died before the wedding. Many honours were bestowed upon her, including the genera Eastwoodia Brandegee (Asteraceae) and Aliciella Brand (Polemoniaceae), but she refused to accept any honorary degrees.

Sources:
M.M. Bonta, 1991, Women in the Field: 93-102
W.G. Gambill, 1988, "The Story of Miss Alice Eastwood", The Green Thumb, 45(2): 53-72
E.Rush, 2003, "Hardy Perennial: Alice Eastwood Reinvigorates the Academy", Wild California, 56(2): 22-26.