Joseph Charles Arthur (January 11, 1850 – April 30, 1942) was a pioneer American plant pathologist and mycologist best known for his work with the parasitic rust fungi (Pucciniales). He was a charter member of the Botanical Society of America, the Mycological Society of America, and the American Phytopathological Society. He was an elected member of both the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was a recipient of the first Doctorate in Sciences awarded by Cornell University.
Biography
Joseph Charles (“JC”) Arthur (1850–1942) was born in Lowville, New York, on January 11, 1850. Early in his childhood, his family moved to a farm near Charles City, Iowa, where he grew up. It was during that time that Arthur developed an interest in flowering plants. He was one of the first students to enroll at Iowa State College (now University) in 1869. Due to his interest in plants, he planned to study botany during college. Much to his dismay, no botanists were at Iowa State during his first year. In his second year, botanist Charles E. Bessey obtained a professorship at Iowa State and it was under his guidance that Arthur began his formal study of botany. To help facilitate Arthur’s studies, Bessey purchased a rust collection from the herbarium of Moses A. Curtis. Arthur graduated from Iowa State in 1872.
In 1876, Arthur took a position as an instructor at Iowa State. He published his first paper that year, which was a catalog of the flowering plants of Iowa. It was during this time that he met E.W.D Holway, another noted botanist and mycologist. The two became friends and colleagues until Holway’s death in 1923. In 1877, Arthur received his Master's of Science (M.S.) at Iowa State. After that, he studied briefly at Harvard and Johns Hopkins University. From 1879 to 1881, Arthur was an instructor at the University of Wisconsin and then at the University of Minnesota during the following year.
After his year in Minnesota, Arthur became the first botanist to work at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, New York. This appointment was the first of its kind in the United States. There, most of his work was with bacterial or fire blight of pear. He was the first to establish that bacteria can cause plant disease. He was also the first plant pathologist to successfully execute Koch's postulates.
In 1885, while still at the New York Agricultural Experiment Station, he went to an AAAS meeting in New York City. During a break, botanist L.M. Underwood took Arthur to a pasture in the Bronx that was to become the future site of the New York Botanical Garden. Underwood confided in Arthur that the Garden was spearheading an effort to publish systematic descriptions of the entire North American flora and Arthur was most likely going to be in charge of the section on rust fungi. Arthur was elated by this news, as was the New York Agricultural Experiment Station where he was granted increased freedom to study rusts. For his part, Arthur joined a consortium of collaborators to write 12 parts of the North American Flora, totaling 884 pages of descriptions, measurements, and host and distribution records of rust fungi. The first part was published in 1907 and the last in 1931.
The year after Arthur earned his Doctor of Science from Cornell in 1886, he was appointed professor of botany at Purdue University, where he remained until his retirement in 1915. He was also the first botanist at the Purdue University Agricultural Experiment Station. Purdue continued to support his contribution to the North American Flora. One of his first accomplishments while at Purdue was determining that formalin could be used as a fungicide to control potato scab.