The New International Encyclopædia/Bessey, Charles Edwin

BESSEY, bēs'sī, Charles Edwin (1845 — ). An American botanist, born at Milton, Ohio. He graduated in 1809 at the Michigan Agricultural College, studied at Harvard under Prof. Asa Gray, in 1872, and 1875-76, and was professor of botany at the Iowa Agricultural College from 1870 to 1884. In 1884 he was appointed professor of botany at the University of Nebraska. He is the botanical editor of Science, and has published The Geography of Iowa (1876), and two excellent text-books, Botany for High Schools and Colleges (1880) and The Essentials of Botany (1884).