American botanist interested in the genus Mimulus L. Adele Grant (née Lewis) taught botany for several years at the Huguenot College in Wellington, South Africa, and while there collected plants in several countries on that continent. Born in Carpinteria, California, she graduated with a BSc from the University of California, Berkeley, and went on to postgraduate studies at the Henry Shaw School of Botany (Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri). Gaining an MSc and a PhD in botany Grant also served as a teaching fellow and was associated with the Missouri Botanical Garden. On receiving her doctorate she began to teach at Cornell University before she moved to South Africa in 1925.
During her five year stay in South Africa Grant gathered plant specimens in both the South-Western and Eastern Cape. In 1928-1929 she took a trip to through southern and northern Rhodesia to the Belgian Congo. In 1930 she also visited Kenya and Mozambique, her botanising primarily focused on the Scrophulariaceae family. Working with botanists at the University of Cape Town's Bolus Herbarium she published little at the time but developed an important herbarium. On her return to the USA in 1930 Grant began to work at the Missouri Botanical Garden, but soon returned to California with her collection to study the material at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1969, when the Missouri Botanical Garden was recognised as the official centre for the study of African plants in North America, the collection was moved there for study. Grant continued to teach, working at San Francisco State College, the University of Southern California and at George Pepperdine College, and on retiring became Supervisor of Science for the Los Angeles County Schools. As a botanist she published monographs of the genera Mimulus and Hemimeris L., but was also interested in ornithology and marine life.
Sources:
P. Goldblatt, 1976, "The African Herbarium of Adele Lewis Grant", Taxon, 25(2/3): 375-376
Biography of Adele Lewis Grant, Graduate Women in Science:
http://www.gwis.org/images/about/history/pastdonors/adele_lews.pdf, accessed 8th June
Adele L. Grant Field Notes, 1915-1921, University and Jepson Herbaria Archives, University of California, Berkeley:
http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/archon/?p=collections/findingaid&id=78&q=&rootcontentid=616#id616, accessed 8th June 2011.
