Ernst A. Bessey House, 213 University Dr. (1922)

Ernst A. Bessey House, February 1992. Photo Credit: Kevin S. Forsyth.

Ernst Athearn Bessey (1877–1957) was Professor of Botany beginning in 1910, following the retirement of William Beal. He served as President of the Michigan Academy of Sciences in 1915. As Professor of Botany he resided with his family in Faculty Row № 7, better known today as Cowles House, before they moved to this house upon its completion in 1922.[Minutes, 12 Jul 1922, p. 546]

E. A. Bessey was the son of Charles Edwin Bessey (1845–1915, M.A.C. ’69), another prominent botanist who became Professor of Botany at the Iowa Agricultural College at Ames in 1870, later Dean and Acting Chancellor at the University of Nebraska. Mrs. E. A. Bessey, née Edith Carleton Higgins, was, like her husband, a student of Dr. Bessey the elder.

Ernst Bessey retired from M.S.C. as Chair of the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology in 1944.