American pharmaceutical manufacturer and plant collector in Detroit. Oliver A. Farwell became an authority on the vascular plants of Michigan and was particularly concerned with the ferns. From Dorchester, Massachusetts, he moved with his family to the Keweenaw Peninsular, Michigan, and here a high school teacher encouraged him to study botany. Farwell collected pteridophytes in this region during the 1880s while he attempted many different professions, including farming, wood-cutting and engineering, before he attended the State Normal School in 1890. Two years later he moved to Detroit and started working for Parke, Davis and Co., a drug manufacturing company, and remained there until his retirement in 1933. With his background in botany he soon became the firm's botanist and librarian, and in 1893 was named drug inspector. Farwell also worked as professor of botany at the Detroit College of Pharmacy in 1918-1919. For a brief while he attended the College of the City of Detroit and on his retirement was awarded an honorary doctorate by the same institution.

Farwell's botanising took place in and around Detroit, as well as further afield in Michigan, and he became quite an authority on the vascular plants of that state. For many years he took every Wednesday "off" from the pharmacy in order to collect specimens and also took excursions at the weekends. Amongst his most important papers are a series of 17 works entitled "Contributions to the Botany of Michigan" (1894-1940), a series of nine "Notes on the Michigan Flora" (1918-1945) and a further seven called "Botanical Gleanings in Michigan" (1923-1930).

Within the pteridophytes Farwell was particularly interested in the Equisetum L. subgenus Hippochaete J.Milde but he was not primarily concerned with systematics. Farwell was a member of numerous botanical and general scientific societies and regularly published his findings in their journals. He was also a member of many historic and genealogical societies. Farwell's herbarium is estimated to number some 15,000 specimens but many of these are unnumbered and un-mounted. The collection is housed in the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

Sources
D.C. Drife and J.E. Drife, 1990, "Oliver A. Farwell's early pteridophyte records from the Keweenaw Peninsula", The Michigan Botanist, 29: 89-96
R. McVaugh, S.A. Cain and D.J. Hagenah, 1953, Farwelliana: an account of the life and botanical work of Oliver Atkins Farwell, 1867-1944.