John Torrey papers

John Torrey was born in New York City on August 15th, 1796, and as a youth collected and observed the plants of the area. When he was 15 years old, his father was appointed fiscal agent of the State Prison at Greenwich, in what is now Greenwich Village. There he met Amos Eaton, a pioneer in natural science education, who was at the time incarcerated on charges of forgery. Eaton encouraged Torrey's interest in botany, mineralogy and chemistry. In 1815 Torrey began medical studies at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 1817, while still a medical student, he prepared "A catalogue of plants, growing spontaneously within thirty miles of the city of New-York" for the newly-formed New York Lyceum of Natural History, of which he was a co-founder. He received his medical degree in 1818 and briefly opened a medical practice in New York, continuing to spend his leisure time with other scientific pursuits, particularly botany and chemistry.

In 1824, the newly-married Torrey accepted a position as professor of chemistry, mineralogy and geology at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he was also assistant surgeon. That same year he published "A flora of the northern and middle sections of the United States." Three years later, he left West Point for a position as professor of chemistry and botany at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City.

As his reputation grew, renowned botanists entrusted their specimens to him for identification. His own investigations extended to the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains on their Western boundary having been furnished with the collections of Dr. Edwin James, botanist of Major Stephen H. Long's 1820 western expedition. As early as 1823, Torrey reported descriptions of some new species from the expedition to the Lyceum of Natural History. He took an early interest in the genus Carex and was asked by Schweinitz to edit his "A monograph of the North American species of Carex."

Growing dissatisfied with the accepted Linnean system of classification, Torrey became one of the first American botanists to apply John Lindley's new "natural system" in a paper entitled "Some account of a collection of plants made during a journey to and from the Rocky Mountains in the summer of 1820, by Edwin P. James, M.D. Assistant Surgeon U.S. Army" in 1826. In 1831, Torrey supervised the publication an American reprint of the first edition of Lindley's "An introduction to the natural system of botany," bringing Lindley's work to a wider American audience, and appended a catalogue of North American genera arranged in accordance with it.

Torrey began perhaps the most important professional relationship of his life in 1832, when he met Asa Gray, a young doctor with a keen interest in botany. They had been exchanging specimens for almost two years, beginning while Gray was still a medical student, before meeting face to face. After a joint collecting trip to the New Jersey pine barrens Torrey engaged the younger man as an assistant and, in many ways, a surrogate son. Their close personal and professional association lasted for the rest of Torrey's life, through their joint work on "A flora of North America," and Gray's appointment as professor of botany at Harvard.

Because of his early interest in the plant life of New York State , Torrey was appointed State Botanist for the newly-created New York Natural History Survey in 1836, which required him to prepare a comprehensive flora of the state. "A flora of the state of New York" was published in 1843 and was the largest single work of its kind to date. In addition to his duties as State Botanist and at the Medical College, Torrey had, in 1830, accepted an appointment as professor of chemistry at Princeton, which he held until 1854.

Despite his many professional engagements, Torrey's work on the "A flora of North America" occupied a prominent role in his life, including identifying and describing the hundreds of plants collected during the government-sponsored surveys for the Pacific Railroad and the Mexican Boundary Survey. Torrey also prepared botanical reports for the expeditions of Stephen Long, Joseph Nicollet, John Frémont, William Emory, Lorenzo Sitgreaves, Howard Stansbury, Randolph Marcy, and Charles Wilkes.

When the United States Mint established an Assay Office in New York in 1854, Torrey was offered the position of assayer based on his skills as a chemist and the recommendation of his close friend Joseph Henry. After some consideration Torrey accepted, and the steady work allowed him to retire from academia and devote his free time solely to botany. He was to hold this position until his death on March 10th, 1873.