Paul Christoph Mangelsdorf
Paul Christoph Mangelsdorf was an American botanist and agronomist, known for his work on the origins of maize. He served as professor of economic botany at Harvard University from 1940 to 1967.
Life and education
Mangelsdorf was born in Atchison, Kansas. His father, a Prussian immigrant, ran a seeds and greenhouse concern; his mother was also German. He earned his bachelor's degree from Kansas State University in 1921, when it was still Kansas State Agricultural College. Later that year, he became Donald F. Jones's assistant at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station and simultaneously furthered his studies at Harvard University, attaining his doctorate in 1925 under the direction of Edward Murray East.In 1927 Mangelsdorf became a researcher at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, where he became interested in the genetic origins of maize. In 1940 he became a professor of economic botany at Harvard and continued his research there until his retirement in 1968. He simultaneously served as director of the Botanical Museum at Harvard University from 1945 to 1967 and chaired Harvard’s Institute for Research in Experimental and Applied Botany from 1947 to 1966. In this capacity, he oversaw the Arnold Arboretum, the Bussey Institution, the Harvard Forest, the Atkins Garden and Research Laboratory in Cuba, and the Maria Moors Cabot Foundation for Botanical Research. After his retirement, he continued his research at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he died on July 22, 1989.
In 1941, Mangelsdorf became an agricultural consultant for the Rockefeller Foundation and was involved in the development of Office of Special Services that became the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center. This project would be instrumental in the Green Revolution.