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David Grandison Fairchild (April 7, 1869 - August 6, 1954) was an American botanist and plant explorer. Fairchild was responsible for the introduction of more than 200,000 exotic plants〔Williams 1963. p. 185.〕 and varieties of established crops into the United States, including soybeans,〔Fairchild 1938. p. 259.〕 pistachios,〔Fairchild 1938. p. 174.〕 mangos, nectarines, dates, bamboos, and flowering cherries. Certain varieties of wheat,〔Barbour 1943. p. 145.〕 cotton, and rice became especially economically important. == Background == Fairchild was born in Lansing, Michigan, and was raised in Manhattan, Kansas. He was a member of the Fairchild family, descendants of Thomas Fairchild of Stratford, Connecticut. He graduated from Kansas State College of Agriculture (B.A. 1888, M.S. 1889) where his father, George Fairchild, was president. He continued his studies at Iowa State and at Rutgers with his uncle, Byron Halsted, a noted biologist. He received an honorary D.Sc. degree from Oberlin College in 1915. Barbour Lathrop, a wealthy world traveler, persuaded Fairchild to become a plant explorer for the US Department of Agriculture. Lathrop and another wealthy patron, Allison Armour, financed some of Fairchild's many explorations for new plants to be introduced into the U.S. Fairchild was the author of a number of popular books on his plant collecting expeditions. Of those early travels, Fairchild wrote, "I am glad that I saw a few of the quiet places of the world before the coming of automobiles ...".〔Fairchild 1938. p. 103.〕 For many years Fairchild managed the Office of Seed and Plant Introduction of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. One accomplishment was to help introduce the cherry trees from Japan to Washington.〔National Park Service〕 In 1898 he established the introduction garden for tropical plants in Miami, Florida.〔Fairchild 1947. p. 19.〕 In 1905 he married Marian, younger daughter of Alexander Graham Bell. Fairchild was a member of the board of trustees of the National Geographic Society,〔Poole 2004. p. 133.〕 and an officer in what is now called the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.〔Fairchild 1938. p. 380.〕 In 1926, the Fairchilds built a home on an parcel on Biscayne Bay in Coconut Grove, Florida. They named it "The Kampong", after similar family compounds in Java, Indonesia, where Fairchild had spent so many happy days collecting plants. He covered this property with an extraordinary collection of rare tropical trees and plants and eventually wrote a book about the place, entitled "The World Grows Round my Door". In 1984, The Kampong became part of the National Tropical Botanical Garden. In 1938, he was honored by having the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables named after him. Fairchild was a member of the board of regents of the University of Miami from 1929 to 1933. For three of those years he was chairman of the board.〔Tebeau 1976. p. 43〕 In 1933 he was awarded the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.nasonline.org/about-nas/awards/public-welfare-medal.html )〕 His son, Alexander Graham Bell Fairchild lived and worked as a research entomologist for 33 years at the Gorgas Memorial Laboratory in the Republic of Panama. A daughter, Nancy Bell, married another entomologist, Marston Bates, author of many books on natural history. She herself wrote a book about living in rural Colombia during the 1940s: "East of the Andes and West of Nowhere". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「David Fairchild」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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