Profile · De Pere, Wisconsin
Alexander Hanchett Smith
University of Michigan mycologist; West De Pere High 1923 (born Crandon)
$300,000
Alexander Hanchett Smith was the University of Michigan mycologist who made agarics his life’s work and sold more than one hundred thousand copies of The Mushroom Hunter’s Field Guide. West De Pere High School, class of 1923, is the city lock after a family move from Crandon. Born in Crandon on December 12, 1904 (some tables print the 13th), he was the second child of Ruth and Edward Schmidt, who later made the name Smith. After his mother died in his teens, the family moved to West De Pere to live with paternal grandparents. A year off after the 1923 diploma, then Lawrence College in Appleton (B.A. 1928), then Michigan for mycology under Calvin Kauffman—who died before the dissertation—and Edwin Mains. He took an M.A. in 1929 and a Ph.D. in 1933 on two-spored Mycena. He never left the University of Michigan Herbarium: assistant curator in 1934, director from 1959 to 1972. Something over one hundred thousand collections across fifty-seven field seasons sit in the herbarium he ran. The field guide appeared in 1958 and 1963. Wife Helen Vandervort Smith earned a Michigan botany Ph.D. and drew plates; daughter Nancy Smith Weber became a mycologist on the same forays. Amanita smithiana carries his name. He was president of the Mycological Society of America, edited Mycologia from 1945 to 1950, and was named Distinguished Mycologist in 1982. He died in Ann Arbor on December 12, 1986.