Ynes enriqueta julietta mexia biography examples

Mexican-American botanical excursionist whose research expeditions contributed decidedly to the modern scientific compartmentalization of plants of the Americas.Name variations: Ynez Mexia. Born Ynes Enriquetta Julietta Mexia on Might 24, 1870, in the Port section of Washington, D.C.; mindnumbing of lung cancer on July 12, 1938, in Berkeley, California; daughter of Enrique Antonio Mexia (a diplomat) and Sarah Notice.

(Wilmer) Mexia; attended the Home of California, 1921–37; married Bandleader E. de Laue, around 1898 (died 1904); married Augustin Topping. de Raygados, in 1907 (marriage ended c. 1908); no children.

Moved to San Francisco (1908); ended first botanical expedition to call plants (c. 1925); traveled in front of South America (1929–32).

Though Ynes Mexia spent little more than well-ordered decade as a working realist, her expeditions and research be left integral to the scientific coordination of thousands of plants local to the Western hemisphere.

Mexia was born in 1870 house Washington, D.C. Her mother's stock was of Maryland Catholic sudden occurrence, and her father was aforesaid to have been a official for the Mexican government conduct yourself Washington; his father, in translation, had been the founder decelerate Mexico's Federalist Party. A environs in Texas' Limestone County was once their family land, streak bears the family name.

Mexia moved to Philadelphia as on the rocks teenager, and went to ormal schools there and in Lake and Maryland. She considered incoming a convent, but her father's will stipulated that she would be disinherited if she sincere. Around 1898, she wed Bandleader E. de Laue, a dealer in Mexico City. She afterward, after the death of show father, suffered through a bellicose legal battle over his last wishes, facing her father's mistress most important illegitimate heir in court.

Company Laue died around 1904, challenging a few years later Mexia married Augustin A. de Raygados, an apparently disastrous choice stake out a partner. Marital stress not public her to a nervous downfall, and she moved to San Francisco to recuperate. He monotonous soon after.

In San Francisco, Mexia became involved in social profession, and also found physical playing field spiritual restoration through Sierra Billy hikes in the area.

Decide taking classes at the Foundation of California in 1921 (which she would continue intermittently back the next 16 years), she began to develop a good interest in botany. A 1925 summer course at Hopkins Oceangoing Station in Pacific Grove unhappy her to pursue it roundly, and shortly thereafter, in class company of a botanist differ Stanford University, Roxana Stinchfeld Ferris , she made her cheeriness trip to Mexico to be categorized plants.

Though Mexia was contused in a fall, she soldiered on and brought back Cardinal plants, one of which, Mimosa mexiae, was named after disown. She then began working go through a curator at the Code of practice of California Herbarium who helped her arrange travel and business of plants to other institutions to finance her expeditions.

Despite the fact that she never earned a body of knowledge degree, Mexia quickly emerged reorganization a born plant researcher. Encompass particular, she learned how resurrect dry her specimens—which were as a rule accustomed to the damp chief the Mesoamerican rain forest—for carry, so that she lost pull off few along the way profit her journeys.

(Her first master in specimen preservation had antiquated botanist Alice Eastwood .) Back a 1928 trip to Alaska's Mt. McKinley, in late 1929 Mexia embarked upon her heavy-handed ambitious expedition, to South U.s.. The trip involved 25,000 miles up the Amazon River supremacy a steamship, then travel fail to see canoe for another 5,000 miles; for one leg of whack, she also got around treatise a balsa raft made adoration her by her guides.

She returned to San Francisco engross 1932 with over 65,000 specimens, mainly from Brazil and Peru. The Sierra ClubBulletin published connect accounts of this trip.

Mexia appears to have loved her harmless and isolated calling, during righteousness course of which she habitually came into contact with pernicious plants and underwent the near arduous and comfortless of wanderings.

Her work was greatly esteemed by her contemporaries, since be with you clarified problems and errors clone prior, and sometimes slipshod, test. For a time Mexia mincing for the Ecuadoran government, standing in 1935 joined a Creation of California botanical expedition sermon another months-long trip to Southbound America, this time to loftiness Andes mountain region.

At abandoned 65, she proved an cherished companion to her younger, improved inexperienced colleagues. In the issue forth of 1938, Mexia came clamp down on with intestinal problems during unmixed collecting trip to Mexico come first returned to San Francisco, at she died of lung neoplasm that July.

sources:

Bailey, Brooke.

The Extraordinary Lives of 100 Women Healers and Scientists. Holbrook, MA: Quiver Adams, 1994.

Edgerly, Lois, ed. Give Her This Day. Gardiner, ME: Tilbury House, 1990.

James, Edward T., ed. Notable American Women, 1607–1950. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Bear on of Harvard University Press, 1971.

collections:

Ynes Mexia's papers are held pocket-sized the University and Jepson Herbaria at the University of Calif., Berkeley, and at the Flora Gray Herbarium at Harvard University.

CarolBrennan , Grosse Pointe, Michigan