Researching John Curtis

Curtis completed his Ph.D. in botany at the University of Wisconsin in 1937. He remained affiliated with that university for the remainder of his career, except through 1942–1945, when he served as research director of the Société Haïtiano-Américaine de Développement Agricole. Both in 1942 and in 1956, he was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships. In 1951 he was made full professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin.

The collective efforts of Curtis and the thirty-nine Ph.D. students that he managed to supervise during his relatively short career, resulted in the work ‘’’The Vegetation of Wisconsin: An Ordination of Plant Communities, published 1959. This book remains one of the important contributions to the field of plant ecology during the twentieth century, and spawned the Wisconsin School of North American plant ecology.

He was also a "well-known contributor" to the Bulletin of the American Orchid Society.

He was born in Dublin on 15 March 1880, educated at Trinity College, Dublin (Trinity Master of Arts {MA Dubl}) and ordained in 1904. He was a curate at Christ Church, Leeson Park in his home city after which he joined the Dublin University Mission to Fukien; he married Eda Bryan-Brown, a fellow missionary who was also a doctor. He was a Temporary Chaplain to the Forces in 1917-18 serving in SalonikaHe was Bishop of Chekiang, China, from 1929 to 1949, during which period the Nationalist, Communist and Japanese armies fought over the country. On his return to England he was made Vicar of Wilden, Stourport, and retired in 1957. The Bishop and his wife had two children. He died on 11 July 1962 and his widow on 18 January 1964. He had become a Doctor of Divinity (DD).