Robert Earle Buchanan (March 27, 1883, Cedar Rapids, Iowa – 1973, Ames, Iowa) was an American bacteriologist and a professor and administrator at Iowa State University.
[1] He is known for his work on bacterial taxonomy.[2]
Biography
Buchanan grew up on a farm.[2] He graduated in 1904 with a B.S. and in 1906 with an M.S. from Iowa State College[3] (now named Iowa State University). He worked as an undergraduate as a student assistant to Louis Hermann Pammel, whom he accompanied on botanical surveys. He was from 1904 to 1906 as teaching assistant in bacteriology under Pammel.[1] In 1908 Buchanan received his Ph.D. in bacteriology from the University of Chicago.[1] His doctoral dissertation The Morphology of Bacillus Radicicola,[4] written under the supervision of Edwin O. Jordan, deals with nitrogen-fixing bacteria that live in the nodules of a variety of legume species.[1] At Iowa State College, Buchanan was from 1908 to 1909 an associate professor and was appointed in 1909 a full professor.[3] He founded in 1910 the college's department of bacteriology and headed the department until his retirement in 1948.[2] Two important bacteriologists in the early history of the department are Max Levine (1889–1967) and Chester Hamlin Werkman (1893–1962) (who was Buchanan's doctoral student).[1] Buchanan was the dean of Iowa State's Graduate College from 1919 to 1948[2] and director of the Iowa Agriculture Experiment Station from 1933 to 1945.[1]
Buchanan, R. E. (1966). "History and Development of the American Type Culture Collection". The Quarterly Review of Biology. 41 (2): 101–104. doi:10.1086/404936. PMID5946752. S2CID32609060.
