Per Axel Rydberg records

P. A. (Per Axel) Rydberg (1860-1931) was the first curator of the NYBG Herbarium. A plant taxonomist whose specialty was the flora of the Rocky Mountain and Great Plains areas. He began working for the NYBG in the summer of 1897 as a member of the first NYBG field expedition and joined the permanent staff in 1899 when they were first organized. In the course of his career, he was to publish over 7000 pages of research making him one of the most productive scientists at the NYBG.

Per Axel Rydberg was born in Sweden and emigrated to America in 1882. He first worked in the iron mines of Michigan where he hoped to become a mining engineer but he suffered a serious accident which left him with a lifelong limp and forced him to turn to intellectual pursuits.

From 1884-90, he taught mathematics at the Luther Academy in Wahoo, Nebraska while he studied at the University of Nebraska. He received his BS in 1891 and the strong influence of his botany professor, Charles Edwin Bessey, helped to determine his lifelong devotion to plant studies.

Soon after he graduated, he received a commission from the USDA to undertake a botanical exploration of western Nebraska. He received another in 1892 to explore the Black Hills of South Dakota and in 1893 he was in the Sand Hills of western Nebraska. During this time he continued to teach at the Luther Academy.

In 1895, he received his MA from the University of Nebraska and the university published his monograph on Rosales, one of only three parts published of a projected 25 part series on the flora of Nebraska. That summer, he was collecting once again for the USDA in Montana with Cornelius Lott Shear. When autumn arrived, he moved to New York to pursue a PhD degree at Columbia University under the guidance of Nathaniel Lord Britton. During this time he was also teaching natural sciences and mathematics at the Upsala Institute (later Upsala College) in Brooklyn and Kenilworth, New Jersey. During the summer of 1897, he was sent to collect in Montana and the Yellowstone Park region with Ernst Athearn Bessey, son of his mentor Charles Edwin Bessey. The two were part of the first field program expedition of the NYBG.

Dr. Rydberg received his PhD in 1898 and during that summer was employed once again by the NYBG to process the collections obtained from the Montana and Yellowstone park expedition. Early in 1899, the NYBG organized its first permanent staff and he became one of the nine original members. His title was initially Assistant Curator and this was changed in 1908 to Curator of the Herbarium. He would hold that title until his death in 1931.

In 1900 Dr. Rydberg conducted field work in southeast Colorado with King Vreeland. In 1901 he visited Kew Gardens in England and made a return trip to Sweden as well. 1905 saw him collecting in Utah with visits to the University of Wyoming, Los Angeles and San Francisco. In 1911 he undertook an exploration of southeast Utah with Albert Osbun Garrett and in 1925, the Allegheny Mountains with John Tuttle Perry. A trip in 1926 took him to Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and the Dakotas. His final field expedition was in 1929 to Kansas and Minnesota but was cut short due to illness and only included work in Kansas.

Dr. Rydberg was elected to membership in the Torrey Botanical Club in 1896. In 1900 he joined the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was elected a fellow the following year. Also that year, he was chosen as an Associate of the Botanical Society of America. In 1907 he became a member of the American Geographical Society and the Ecological Society of America.