Alma Whiffen Barksdale records

Alma Whiffen Barksdale (1916-1981) was born in Hammonton, New Jersey, 25 October 1916. She received her A.B. (1937) at Maryville College, Maryville, Tennessee; M.S. (1939) in botany and Ph.D. (1941) in botany and mycology at the University of North Carolina where she was a Carnegie Fellow (1941-42). Dr. Barksdale conducted postdoctoral research under Dr. John N. Couch (1943) and became a National Research Council Fellow with Dr. William H. Weston at Harvard University from 1942-43.

Dr. Barksdale’s work falls into three periods. The first was her graduate and postdoctoral studies on the cytology, nutrition, and taxonomy of aquatic fungi (phyla Oomycota and Chytridiomycota). Her contributions included: (1) the development of methods for the isolation, purification, and culture of nine genera of lower aquatic fungi; (2) the determination of their nutritional requirements; and (3) the discovery of a new type of sexual life cycle in the Blastocladiales, an order composed of aquatic parasites.

In the second period of her work, she was employed as a professional mycologist in the Department of Antibiotic Research of the Upjohn Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan (1943-52). She discovered cycloheximide, an antifungal agent used to control fungal spot diseases in cherries and on turfs of golf greens. She played a major role in the development of actidione, the trade name for cycloheximide, an antibiotic derived from Streptomyces griseus, used in isolating pathogenic fungi. In 1951 Dr. Barksdale was a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow at Stanford University with C. B. Van Niel. In 1952 she married Lane Barksdale and spent a year in Paris working on research projects.

In 1952 Dr. Barksdale became a research associate at the New York Botanical Garden where she investigated sexual reproduction in the genus Achlya, comprised of filamentous aquatic fungi. Thus commenced the third period of her career. Her studies confirmed and further developed the work of Dr. John Raper on sexual hormones in Achlya. She discovered that the hormone that induces the formation of antheridia in Achlya is a steroid secreted by female strains of Achlya bisexualis and A. ambisexualis. She confirmed the structure of this hormone, antheridiol, by laboratory synthesis.

Dr. Barksdale’s career at the NYBG spanned two decades; her final position was Senior Botanist (1972-75), after which she retired for reasons of health. She published over 30 papers on Achlya and aquatic fungi. She served on the editorial board of Mycologia (1949-59), as its book review editor (1969), and as Secretary-Treasurer of the Mycological Society of America (1971-73). After a long illness, she died 5 July 1981.