American mycologist. John Karling was born on a farm near Austin, Texas, and at the age of 16 enrolled in botany at the University of Texas. He graduated in 1919, earned his MS degree two years later, and then went to Columbia University for doctoral studies in fungal cytology with R.A. Harper. After his PhD, he remained at Columbia for more than twenty years as an assistant professor (1926-1935) and an associate professor (1935-1948). During this part of his career, he also served as a physiologist for the Tropical Research Foundation (1925-1927) and as director of the Chicle Research Experimental Station (1927-1932) in British Honduras (Belize).

While in Central America, in addition to making some phanerogam collections, he made excavations at Mayan archaeological sites which earned his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in Britain. In 1942, he went to Bermuda as a Biological Research Fellow and from there to Brazil to direct the survey of the Matto Grosso and Amazon Valley for the United States Rubber Development Corporation, which was looking for sources of natural rubber to aid the war effort. In 1948, he transferred to Purdue University, where he led the reorganisation of the life sciences programme and later served as the university's first Distinguished Professor of Biological Research.

Although officially retired in 1964, he maintained a research laboratory at Purdue until the age of 92. He also made two final expeditions. In 1963 he went to India with UNESCO to study fungal diseases in fish. This led to his appointment two years later as a visiting lecturer at the University of Madras, after which he went south on a Fulbright Research Fellowship to explore New Zealand, Australia, and the South Pacific Islands. Notable among his publications are The Plasmodiophorales (1942) and The Simple Biflagellate Holocarpic Phycomycetes (1942), Synchytrium (1963) and Iconographia Chryridiomycetearum (1977). In 1987 he received the Distinguished Mycologist Award from the Mycological Society of America, which he had helped to found, and was named Mycologist of the Year by the International Society of Mycology.

Sources:
Anon, 1996, "John S. Karling 1897-1995", Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, 123(3): 258
K.J. Curry and H.T. Horner, 1995, "John S. Karling 1897-1994", Plant Science Bulletin, 41(4).