American botanist. Born in Toledo, Ohio, Wayne Eyer Manning graduated in ecology from Oberlin College in 1920 and received his PhD in botany from Cornell in 1926 for his work on the walnut and hickory family. After short teaching posts at Cornell and the University of Illinois, Urbana, he joined the faculty of Smith College in 1928. He left this position in 1941 to work as a machine operator in a defence plant as part of the war effort, and in spare moments at the factory he found the time to teach basic mathematics to some of the women machinists with whom he worked. In 1945 he became a professor of botany at Bucknell University, where he remained until his retirement in 1968. During those years, he and his wife, Margaret Sheldon Manning, developed the living plant collection, which includes more than 400 plant species, as well as a substantial herbarium with over 22,000 specimens from around the world which was named in his honour in 1977. As a botanist, he specialised in the taxonomy and floral anatomy of the Juglandaceae and is commemorated in the walnut species Alfaroa manningii Jorge León from Costa Rica. He lived to the age of 104. He and his wife collected in various parts of Mexico in 1953.
Sources:
W.G. Abrahamson, 2004, "Wayne E. Manning, 1899-2004", ASPT Newsletter, 18(1).
