Charlotte Elliott (botanist)

Elliott was born in Berlin, Wisconsin. She got her undergraduate degree in zoology at Stanford University in 1907. For a few years afterwards she taught biology at the state normal school in Spearfish and took summer courses at the University of Chicago.[3][4] She returned to Stanford for master's work in plant physiology, receiving her A.M. in 1913.[1] She was offered an appointment as assistant in the botany department but refused for reasons having to do with her family and instead returned to Wisconsin.[3]

In Wisconsin, she worked for two years (1914–16) as an instructor at South Dakota State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts.[3][4] She left to pursue graduate work in plant pathology, first as a research assistant at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and then as a Ph.D. student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she was supported by a Boston Alumne Fellowship.[3][4] In 1918, she became the first woman to complete the doctoral program in botany at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.[1] Her thesis work focused on halo blight, a disease affecting oats.[1]

Elliott was recruited by the bacteriologist Erwin Frink Smith to work in the Bureau of Plant Industry at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).[1] There she continued her research as a phytobacteriologist or specialist in the organisms harmful to plants, publishing numerous papers in her field.[1][2] Among her scientifically notable papers is one establishing the role of the flea beetle as a vector in the development of the disease known as Stewart's wilt in corn (maize).[1] This research led to a method for forecasting how bad the disease would be in any given year based on temperature indexes that reflected how successfully the beetles had survived the preceding winter.[1] Her work also led to the description of several new species.[2]

Elliott wrote a widely used book, Manual of Bacterial Plant Pathogens, first published in 1930, reissued with revisions in 1951, and still being drawn on by researchers today.[1][2][5]

In 1942, she served as the president of the Botanical Society of Washington.[6]

Elliott died in 1974.

• Matta, C.. "Charlotte Elliott (1883–1974): Great Interest and Unusual Natural Ability". In Pioneering Women in Plant Pathology, J. B. Ristaino, ed. St Paul, MN: American Phytopathological Society Press, 2008, pp. 47–56.
• Robert, A. L., and J. G. Moseman. "Charlotte Elliott, 1883–1974". Phytopathology 66, 1976, p. 237.