Biography

Swedish explorer and botanist interested in the boreal flora on both sides of the Bering Sea. Eric Hultén became famous in his own lifetime as a world expert on the plants of Kamchatka, the Aleutian Islands and Alaska, producing a standard flora for each one of these which drew from his extensive fieldwork. On top of this, he was a scholar of the Scandinavian flora. Hailing from Halla in the Södermanland province of Sweden, he inherited an interest in plant life from his father, a priest and studied at Stockholm University from 1913 to 1931. In 1920 he joined the Swedish Kamchatka expedition, travelling by sled he explored the Bering Sound region and after his return in 1923 began work on the Flora of Kamchatka and the adjacent islands (published 1927-1930).

Moving to Lund University after his graduation he was named curator of its botanical museum. Hultén undertook another great expedition the following year (1932), this time to the Aleutian Islands, where he collected some 2,500 herbarium specimens and his companion W.J. Eyerdam a further 1,800. In 1937 he published both his Flora of the Aleutian Islands and received his doctorate from Lund with a thesis on the quaternary history of the Arctic and Boreal biota. Throughout his life Hultén was interested in patterns of circumboreal plant distribution and their radiations during glacial and interglacial periods, and in this way he was responsible for conceiving of Beringia, the historic land bridge across the Bering Strait. After producing his thesis, Hultén moved on to study the Alaskan flora on many outings, publishing his Flora of Alaska and Yukon between 1941 and 1950.

Returning to Stockholm in 1945 he took up the position of professor and director of the Department of Botany at the Riksmuseum, an institution he would later direct in its entirety (1950-1951). Never abandoning his research into the Scandinavian flora, at the 7th International Botanical Congress in 1950 Hultén presented his Atlas of the distribution of vascular plants in north-western Europe. He was also responsible for the taxonomic revision of many arctic and boreal taxa which were primarily published in the Botaniska Notiser. In 1961 he retired, but was able to continue his exploration of Alaska until he was crippled by an apoplectic stroke which left him unable to walk and hospitalised for the rest of his life. Married in 1920 to a fellow scientist, Dr. Elsie Vougt, his spouse accompanied him on many of his expeditions and was a keen collector in her own right. Together they had two children.

Sources:
R.E. Fries, 1950, A short history of botany in Sweden
B. Lundblad, 1981, "Deaths: Eric Hultén", Taxon, 30: 733-736
S.G. Shetler, 1967, The Komarov Botanical Institute.