Thomas Henry Kearney

agronomist known for his work on cotton and date palm breeding, plant taxonomy, and the flora of Arizona

Harriman Alaska Expedition. In the early 1900s Kearney traveled throughout North Africa to study crops such as dates and cotton in arid and alkali soils, and began a decades-long period of cotton-breeding research in Arizona. Kearney served as president of the Botanical Society of Washington in 1917.^[3] From 1920 to 1944 he also studied the taxonomy and distributions of plants of Arizona. A major collaborator during this period was Robert Hibbs Peebles, Kearney's junior colleague at the department, with whom Kearney published many papers on cotton genetics and plant taxonomy. The contributions of Kearney and Peebles to the science of cotton growing have been recognized as "among the most outstanding of all time."^[4] The rare, endangered Arizona plant Amsonia kearneyana (commonly known as Kearney's bluestar), was named after Kearney in 1928.^[5] The genus Kearnemalvastrum (Malvaceae), containing two species in Latin America, was posthumously named in honor of Kearney.^[6][7]

San Francisco, California, and became a research associate at the California Academy of Sciences, where he continued his taxonomic studies and collaborations with Peebles. He and Peebles published the first edition of Arizona Flora in 1951, a comprehensive guide to plants of the state that remains a standard reference a half-century later.^[4][8][9] Kearney was named an honorary curator, and was the subject of biographies and tribute articles by his colleagues.^[2] Kearney received the Certificate of Merit by the Botanical Society of America in August, 1956. Kearney died in San Francisco on October 19, 1956, at the age of 82.^[1]