Marie Taylor was an American botanist, born February 16th, 1911, in Sharpsburg Pennsylvania. She was the first woman of any race to earn a science doctorate at Fordham University and acted as the head of the Botany department at Howard University from 1947 to her retirement in 1976. There was even an auditorium that was named in Dr. Taylor’s honor. Dr. Taylor’s main area of research interest lied in plant photomorphogenesis. For her dissertation, Dr. Taylor studied on the influence of definite photoperiods upon the growth and development of initiated floral primordia.
During World War II, Dr. Taylor served in the Army Red Cross in New Guinea where she met her husband Richard Taylor. They both have one son together in 1950. After the war in 1945, Dr. Taylor returned to Washington and joined the Botany department a Howard university as an assistant professor. During her time there, Dr. Taylor had been held instrumental in the design and construction of a new biology building where there was also the botanical greenhouse laboratory on the rooftop of the Ernest E. just hall biology building.
During Dr. Taylor’s career, she organized a series of summer science institutes for high school teachers through grants from the National science foundation and taught them various ways of how they can teach and introduce new methods in carrying out teaching science. She encouraged teachers to teach in innovative ways and influenced them to teach with real life botanical materials and light-microscopes to study living cells and others. On a more critical note, Dr. Taylor was even specifically requested by President Lyndon B. Johnson to enlarge her work nationally and overseas, bring about her teaching style on a whole new international level. Dr. Taylor died on December 28th, 1990, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C while still then working away as the powerhouse she was diligently trying to improve and innovate teacher training in the sciences.
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 