Roland Thaxter was born in Newtonville, Massachusetts on August 28, 1858. He was the youngest son of Levi Lincoln Thaxter, a Harvard graduate and lawyer, and Celia (Laighton) Thaxter, a prominent female poet. His parents provided young Roland with artistic skill, a flair for writing, and his father especially provided him with a fascination for nature. Ofter Levi would take Roland and his other brother John on trips where he would identify birds and plants for them. A diary from one of these trips is house in the Farlow Archives.
Thaxter spent some time in a private school in Cambridge from which he entered Harvard College in 1878 and received his bachelor's degree in 1882. In the fall of 1883 Thaxter entered Harvard Medical School but he soon became more interested in botany. This interest flourished when he came under the influence of William Gilson Farlow, the great cryptogamist, who had just been appointed to Harvard College. Thaxter turned from medicine to botany and Thaxter and Farlow began a deep friendship which lasted throughout their lives.
Thaxter had also been interested in entymology and had amassed a very large collection of the Lepidoptera of New England. To combine his interest in insects with his botanical interests, Farlow suggested that he study the fungus parasites of insects for his doctoral thesis. Thaxter agreed and his doctoral thesis was titled “The Entomophthoreae of the United States”. [Entomophthora is the genus name for a group of fungi that attack and kill house flies] Thaxter received his doctorate of philosophy in 1888 and was appointed to the position of mycologist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. While here he did much of his work on potato scab as well as studying the practical problems of plant disease and fungicides.
In 1891, Thaxter was called to Harvard as Assistant Professor of Cryptogamic Botany, in 1896 he took over teaching of the undergraduates from Farlow, in 1901 became a full professor, and upon Farlow’s death in 1919 Thaxter became the Honorary Curator of the Farlow Herbarium of Cryptagamic Botany.
While at Harvard Thaxter continued his work on various unusual fungi but soon came to focus his work to the order Laboulbeniales. Laboulbeniales are tiny ascomycete fungi that usually live on beetles. Thaxter published 21 papers on this subject. These were all illustrated with his wonderful pen and ink drawings. His pioneering work, in this group is still unsurpassed today.
Besides his teaching and personal research Thaxter also served as editor of the Annals of Botany from 1907-1932. This brought him into an advisory capacity to many young American botanists. Thaxter, unfortunately suffered from extremely poor health. This, combined with his administrative duties prevented him from collecting much in the field. Besides his 1905-1906 trip to South America Thaxter traveled to London and Paris and Berlin at the turn of the last centrury. He also made a trip to Trinidad in 1913.
Later in life Thaxter was handicapped by slowly developing cataracts. By 1925 this condition completely obscured the vision of one eye. The cataract on his left eye developed more slowly, but his vision was just about gone by the time of his last illness. Thaxter died on April 22, 1932.
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