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Collectors of the UNC Herbarium
William Chambers Coker
(1872-1953)
The botanist
who gave his name to one of UNC - Chapel Hill's biology buildings,
its arboretum, and the now-almost- destroyed bit of woods between
the botany building and the bell tower was born in Hartsville,
South Carolina on October 24, 1872. His father was Major James
Lide Coker, an educational reformer who helped to found the South
Carolina public school system and the Coker College for Women
in Hartsville. His mother was Susan Armstrong Stout.
Coker received his undergraduate
education at the University of South Carolina and his Ph.D. from
Johns Hopkins University, working as the first student of Duncan
S. Johnson, in 1901. In 1902 he came to the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill as an associate professor. By 1908 he
was a full professor and chairman of the newly established Botany
Department, located in Davie Hall (now home to the Psychology
Department). He had also begun the planting of the Coker Arboretum. |
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Coker's research interests
were far-ranging. His Ph.D. research concerned the embryogeny
of Taxodium (bald cypress). He continued this type of
work for a short time, investigating embryogeny and seed-formation
in the gymnospermous genera Podocarpus and Cephalotaxus.
He was also interested
in the woody flora of the Southeast, not only in an academic
sense, but also for purposes of landscape design. Other topics
of inquiry included bryophytes, filmy ferns, the teaching of
science, and the biography of Southeastern botanist.
But Coker's first love
was mycology, and the bulk of his publications (137 in his fifty-one
year career at UNC!) are devoted to the fungi. His most noted
achievement is probably his research on the Saprolegniaceae,
a group of water molds. This group was also the subject of one
of Coker's few independent books.
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Besides his scientific research, Coker
also continued his father's interest in education, founding
the Bureau of Design and Improvement of School Grounds. This
group was especially concerned with the beautification of school
grounds through planting. UNC's campus benefited tremendously
from Coker's landscaping skills as he served for thirty years
on the Building and Grounds committee.
Finally, Coker was known for his love
of teaching. He was known for a spontaneous teaching style with
an emphasis on field trips and abundant fresh material for students
to examine.
In a paper published just after Coker's
death (June 27, 1953), his students John N. Couch and Velma
D. Matthews wrote that "to a remarkable degree, he had
the rare ability to stimulate the student to want to find out
more for himself and to believe in the importance of what he
was doing, if it added to knowledge."
Coker had also been known to financially
assist needy graduate students and to contribute from his own
pocket to the collections of the UNC Botany Library (later named
after his student, John Couch). The current strength of both
this library and the herbarium owes much
to Coker's labors.
Reliquiae Cokeriana
Below are two samples of Coker's handwriting.
Both may be clicked upon to obtain larger images. The writing
samples represent a letter to L. H. Bailey at Cornell, written
in Coker's more legible hand and notes taken from Theophrastus'
Enquiry into Plants.
The manuscript materials on this page are
from the archives of the Herbarium at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill and are used with permission. Further
materials are located in the Coker papers
in the Southern
Historical Collection, Manuscript Department, Wilson Library,
and in the papers of the
UNC Botany Department.
Bibliographica Cokeriana
Coker's writings are extremely numerous,
consisting largely of papers printed in the Journal of the
Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society and Mycologia. These
writings are listed in Couch and Matthews' article in Mycologia
vol. 46, pp. 372-383.
In 2007 the John N. Couch Biology Library
at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill completed an
on-line bibliography
of William Chambers Coker's publications.
A few of Coker's seminal works
are listed below.
Coker, William Chambers. 1923.
The Saprolegniaceae, with notes on other water molds. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Coker, William Chambers. 1923.
Clavarias of the United States and Canada. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press.
Coker, William Chambers &
Henry Roland Totten. 1934. Trees of the southeastern states,
including Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and
Northern Florida. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press.
Coker, William Chambers &
Alma Holland Beers. 1951. The stipitate hydnums of the eastern
United States. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
This page was constructed by Ron
Gilmour with the assistance of Mr. Bill Burk, Mrs. Mary Felton,
Dr. Jim Massey, Mr. Jim Murphy, and Ms. Carol Ann McCormick.
Additional information and corrections are welcome.
  
Curriculum North Carolina UNC
In Ecology Botanical Garden Biology Department
University of North Carolina
Herbarium
CB# 3280, Coker Hall
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3280
phone: (919) 962-6931
fax: (919) 962-6930
email: herbarium@bio.unc.edu
Last Updated: 8 October
2007
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