Charles Schweinfuth papers

Charles Schweinfurth was born on April 13, 1890, to Julius and Mary Schweinfurth in Brookline, Massachusetts. Charles attended Harvard University from 1909 to 1913 where he studied chemistry and biology. During college Schweinfuth contracted polio which resulted in his right arm being slightly paralyzed. Schweinfuth started his graduate studies in chemistry at Harvard, but doctors advised against a career in chemical laboratories due to his slight paralysis.

In 1914, Professor Oakes Ames hired Charles as a caretaker for a collection of live orchids at the Ames Botanical Laboratory in North Easton, MA. Schweinfuth was then transferred to the Oakes Ames Orchid Herbarium to aid in the identification of orchids from around the world. In 1931, Ames transferred his Orchid Herbarium to the Harvard Botanical Museum in Cambridge and Schweinfurth became a research assistant at the Museum. Schweinfurth became one of the world's leading orchidologists. Over his career, he engaged in taxonomic and monographic research resulting in many publications including The genus Epidendrum in the United States and Middle America (1936) and the five volume Orchids of Peru (1958-1961).

Schweinfuth married his longtime friend Maria Elizabeth Westergren in 1963. He continued to study orchids for the rest of his life and died on November 16th, 1970, in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Source: Schultes, R. E. (1971). CHARLES SCHWEINFURTH 1890-1970: An Appreciation. Botanical Museum Leaflets, Harvard University, 23(2), 93–99. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41762273