Kent Parsons Dumont records
Scope and Contents
The Kent Parsons Dumont Records, 1962-1982, documents the administrative and research career of Dumont at the New York Botanical Garden. It's informative value is in its documentation of the academic and financial issues faced by a typical graduate student in the sciences in the mid-20th century. The bulk of the material consists of correspondence generated in his capacity as Assistant Curator and Curator of Fungi manuscripts for his taxonomic research in the Sclerotiniaceae and Leotiaceae and grant applications. The manuscripts offer a rare opportunity to follow a work from first through final drafts. Papers of Richard Korf , Dumont's mentor are found in the Personal Files, Correspondence, Manuscripts and Cornell series. An autobiography of A.J.G.H. Kostermans is filed with correspondence from E.H. Walker. A hand-drawn map of land use in Colombia is located in the Correspondence series in the E (Misc.) folder. Other materials are lists of species related to his expeditions, research and determinations, legal documents regarding the importation of soil samples and copyrights, postcards, photographs, and specimens. The collection is arranged into ten series.
Dates
- 1962 - 1982
- Majority of material found within 1965 - 1980
Biographical / Historical
Kent Parsons Dumont (1941-) is a taxonomic mycologist. He was Curator of Fungi at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) and Assistant Professor of Botany at Lehman College, City University of New York from 1977-1978. He was Associate Curator of Fungi at NYBG from 1969-1977. His fields of research were the Sclerotiniaceae and his treatment of Lambertella was published by NYBG in 1971.
Dr. Dumont was born July 10, 1941 at Newburyport, Mass. He received his AB from Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pa. His advanced education was at Cornell University, from which he earned his MS (1965) and Ph.D. (1970).
At Cornell he studied with Richard P. Korf with whom he maintained a mentor relationship for the duration of his career. While at Cornell he worked with fungal pathogens of onions. In 1966 as part of his field work in Asia, he advised the University of the Philippines on the reorganization of their herbarium.
Along with his position in the Cryptogamic Herbarium, Dumont taught Botany and Mycology at Lehman College through the joint CUNY-NYBG program. He served as Scientific Director for Cryptogams with the Organization for Flora Neotropica. He coordinated two programs for the Second International Mycological Congress. As a member of the Advisory Committee for the Project Flora Amazonica, he assisted in the preparation of the original grant proposal, led expeditions, and developed a system for the handling, sorting and distributing of cryptogamic collections made on the expeditions.
His work was supported by grants from NSF, OAS and Bristol-Myers Corporation. Dumont understood Spanish and much of the correspondence from his South American colleagues is in that language. He worked to facilitate the exchange of information and faculty between the NYBG and centers of study in South America.
He had close working relationships with Pablo Buriticá, Gary Samuels and Steven Carpenter. He was married to Gail Dumont . They had two children, Colette and Marcell. In 1983 he requested and was granted a leave of absence from NYBG. He did not return and made no further contributions to the field.
Extent
7.5 Linear Feet (6 boxes)
Language of Materials
English
Other Finding Aids
- Title
- Kent Parsons Dumont records
- Status
- Completed
- Author
- Laura Zelasnic
- Date
- September 1999
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
- Sponsor
- Originally processed by Laura Zelasnic, Project Archivist, September 1999, with grant funding from The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH-PA 23141-98). Converted to EAD in December 2005 by Kathleene Konkle under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) PA-50678-04.
Revision Statements
- December 2005: Converted to EAD by Kathleene Konkle.
Repository Details
Part of the New York Botanical Garden, Mertz Archives Repository
New York Botanical Garden, Mertz Library
2900 Southern Boulevard
Bronx NY 10458 United States
ssinon@nybg.org