RARE! "Plant Anatomy" Katherine Esau Hand Signed 3X5 Card Todd Mueller COA

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Up for auction a RARE!
"Plant Anatomy" Katherine Esau Hand Signed 3X5 Card.
This item is certified authentic by Todd Mueller Auctions and comes with their Certificate of Authenticity.
ES-5828E
Katherine Esau
(3 April 1898 – 4 June 1997) was a
German
-
American
botanist
who received the
National Medal of Science
for her work on
plant anatomy
.
Esau was born on April 3, 1898 in Yekaterinoslav,
Russian Empire
(
now
Dnipro
,
Ukraine
) to a family of
Mennonites
of German descent, so-called "
Russian Mennonites
". She began studying agriculture in
Moscow
, but after a year her family was prompted by the
Bolshevik Revolution
to move to
Germany
where she completed her studies at the Agricultural College of Berlin. The Esau family moved to
California
in 1922, where Esau worked for the
Spreckels Sugar Company
on sugar beet resistance to curly top virus.
[4]
Esau graduated from Berkeley in 1932. She resumed her education at the
University of California, Davis
, where she achieved her doctorate in 1931, joined the faculty, and remained until her retirement at age 67.
Esau died on 4 June 1997 in
Santa Barbara, California
, USA. Esau was a pioneering
plant anatomist
and her books
Plant Anatomy
(1953) and
Anatomy of Seed Plants
(1977) were key plant structural biology texts for four decades. Her early work in plant anatomy focused on the effect of
viruses
on plants, specifically on plant tissue and development. Esau worked at the
University of California, Davis
as a teacher and later a professor of Botany. While teaching, she continued her research on viruses and specifically
phloem
, the food conducting tissue in plants. In the 1950s, she collaborated with botanist
Vernon Cheadle
on more phloem research. Her treatise
The Phloem
(1969) was published as Volume 5 of the
Handbuch der Pflanzenanatomie
. This volume has been recognized as the most important of the series and was a definitive source of information about phloem.
[6]
Ray Evert, one of Esau's graduate students, says: "The book
Plant Anatomy
brought to life what previously had seemed to me to be a rather dull subject. I was not the only one so affected.
Plant Anatomy
had an enormous impact worldwide, literally bringing about a revivification of the discipline." However, Esau was unaffected by the recognition accorded her, and she told David Russell, who compiled her oral history, "I don't know how I happened to be elected [for the National Medal of Science]. I have no idea what impressed them about me."
In 1963, she was promoted to full professor at Davis.
After retiring from the University of California, Davis, she moved to the
University of California, Santa Barbara
in 1965, and continued research well into her 90s, publishing a total of 162 articles and five books.
When asked by Elga Wasserman to reflect on her education and career, Esau wrote in 1973 that scientific activities dominated her career and added, "I found ways of maintaining spiritual independence while adjusting myself to established policies. . . . I have never felt that my career was being affected by the fact that I am a woman."
In addition that, after being asked in 1992 if she saw herself as a pioneer woman in science, Esau replied, "This is such a funny thing. I never worried about being a woman. It never occurred to me that that was an important thing. I always thought that women could do just as well as men. Of course, the majority of women are not trained to think that way. They are trained to be homemakers. And I was not a homemaker."