Leo Lesquereux

by Chrisopher Kaftan

Introduction

I picked this paleobotanist because of my interest in fossils. I am interested in human and plant fossils and bones. I decided to pick Leo Lesquereux because he is deaf and was well-known in his time as a famous paleobotanist. But the problem is that he has not gotten a lot of recognition because he is disregarded because of his deafness. So I decided to make other people aware of him. After briefly reading an article on Lesquereux, I knew I was attached to him, so I started my research on Leo Lesqu ereux.

About Leo Lesquereux

Nothing stood in his way. He accomplished anything that came in his way. Leo Lesquereuz was a well-known American paleobotanist who lived in the 19th century.

Leo Lesquereux was born in 1806 in Switzerland. Lesquereux was not born deaf, but was partially deafened as a child by a near-fatal fall from a cliff, and this was followed by a progressive loss of hearing.

After immigrating with his family to America, Lesquereux established himself among the fossil hunters. He shunned meetings of the National Academy of Sciences as well as many other learned socieities to which he belonged, preferring to work alone all t he time. He felt he did better work alone.

Lesquereux's subsequent work led to a reputation as the nation's earliest authority on fossil plants. He was second only to William Sullivant in the field of bryology. Lesquereux was the first elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and publ ished many reports on his extensive analyses of fossil plants in the states of Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Arkansas, Kentucky, and others.

In 1863, Lesquereux told his friend that Charles Darwin to him and told Lesquereux that he was interested in the reports that he published on tertiary plants. With Darwin's Origin of Species, many American scientists had problems comprehending the philosophical understanding of the theory in relation to investigations related to their fields. Lesquereux was the one. He had to research the theory and do other experiments to apply them to botany and geology.

By 1864, Lesquereux had begun to show more comfort with the religious implications of Darwin's work. Lesquereux, in an interview, said that every time he reads Darwin's Species, he understands it more every time, and accepts it as the theory it is.

L.R. McCabe interviewed Lesquereux a few years before he died. When McCabe questioned Lesquereux about his associations with men such as Schimper, Scenk, Williamson, and Nathorst, had not indeed left him with many anecedotes and memories, Lesquereux a nswered with:

The science student's life is absorbed with grave and serious truths; they are naturally serious men. My associations have been almost entirely of a scientific nature. My deafness cuts me off from everything that lays outside of science. I h ave lived with nature, the rocks, the trees, the flowers. They know me, I know them. All outside are dead to me.

Leo Lesquereux died an old man in 1889. He was not left alone. He was remembered as one of the most well-known and kindest scientists in American history, hearing or deaf. There will be no other than Leo Lesquereux.

Reference

Lang, Harry G., Silence of the Spheres: The Deaf Experience in the History of Science, Bergin & Garvey, Westport, Connecticut, 1994