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Edmund Schulman was an American researcher specializing in the field of dendrochronology and dendroclimatology, in which he studied the growth of tree rings to see what could be learned from their patterns about climatological history. Throughout his career, he discovered several of the oldest living trees. In 1957, he and Tom Harlan sampled a bristlecone pine tree he named "Methuselah", which he discovered to be the oldest known living nonclonal organism on Earth; at the time he sampled it, it was dated to be 4,789 years old according to its growth rings.
According to his apparent gravestone on Findagrave, he was born July 19, 1908 and died on January 8, 1958 (they add that he was born in Brooklyn, New York and died in Tuscon, Arizona, but that is not mentioned on the gravestone; they also say that he is buried at Evergreen Memorial Park in Tucson). Further establishment of these facts would be great. Need to keep looking here.
Was he married to Alsie French, an assistant English professor at the college? Need to investigate. Possible source: https://ltrr.arizona.edu/awards
Looks like he was.
Facts with references:
- He was born in Brooklyn in 1908.[1]
- He attended New York University and Brooklyn College.[1]
- He attended Arizona State Teachers College after he moved to Arizona.[1]
- Schulman spent his career searching for ancient trees throughout the Western mountains.[2]
- Schulman was mentored by A.E. Douglass, who created the branch of science called dendrochronology, or "tree recorded time," and who founded the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona.[2]
- Schulman graduated from the University of Arizona in 1933 with a Bachelor of Science degree, earning a Master of Science degree from them two years later; during this time, he served as an assistant astronomer at the Steward Observatory under Douglass.[1]
- In order to study climatology and to further develop his research skills, he attended Harvard, where he graduated with a Master of Arts in 1939, later earning a Ph.D. from there in 1945, after which time he returned to the University of Arizona to teach as a professor.[1]
- IN 1953, Schulman sampled rings from the Patriarch Tree, which is the world's largest known bristlecone pine, counting rings that went back 1,500 years; many of its neighbors dated similarly.[2]
- He continued working to date trees in the area for the next several years.[2]
- In the summer of 1957, he discovered what he called Pine Alpha as well as sixteen additional bristlecones dating back at least 4000 years, working with his assistant, "Spade" Cooley.[2]
- Edmund Schulman named Methuselah.[3]
- Edmund Schulman dated Methuselah in 1957.[3]
- Edmund Schulman determined that the tree was older than any other tree on earth.[3]
- Edmund Schulman was a researcher from the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research in Tucson.[3]
- Other trees in the area which have not been sampled may be older.[3]
- The Schulman Grove, in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains, was named for Edmund Schulman.[3]
- Edmund Schulman learned about how Al Noren, a Forest Service ranger, had counted the rings on bristlecones and found that they were quite old.[3]
- Edmund Schulman was following a tip from an Inyo National Forest Ranger when he detoured to California's White Mountains to scout out trees after spending a field season in Idaho.[2]
- Edmund Schulman first visited the White Mountains in 1953.[3]
- Edmund Schulman used a coring device to bore into the trees to extract a very thin sample to date them, which is a harmless process to mature trees.[3]
- Finding three trees more than 4000 years old in the summer of 1957, which he called Alpha, Beta, and Gamma, he had his nephew and a colleague cut Alpha down for further dendrochronology and dendroclimatology research.[4]
- Edmund Schulman wrote an article titled "Bristlecone Pine, Oldest Known Living Thing" for National Geographic, dying shortly before it was published.[3]
- He had plans for a great deal of further research.[2]
- National Geographic Magazine published his article posthumously in March 1958.[2][5]
- An older bristlecone pine was discovered in 1964 by a graduate student, Donald Rusk Currey, but its age of over 4,900 years was only discovered after he had it cut down.[5]
- One of his core samples, examined years after his death by one of his research partners Tom Harlan, shows that it is even older, but the location of the tree it came from is unknown.[3]
- "There is one that Schulman cored, but he died before he could count the rings," said Tom Harlan before his death. “It’s the oldest thing he ever collected, older than Methuselah and probably older than Prometheus. But I won’t show anybody which one it is.” [5]
- Edmund Schulman died of a stroke at the age of forty-nine.[3]
- Schulman died of a heart attack at the age of 49 in 1958.[2]
- When the 28,000-acre Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest was established by the U.S. Forest Service in 1958, an area within it was named the Schulman Memorial Grove in his honor.[2]
References
edit- ^ a b c d e Straka, Thomas J. (2008). "Biographical Portrait: Edmund P. Schulman". Forest History Today: 46–49. Retrieved 2 November 2022.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Stiles, Lori. "UA Scientist Discovered Earth's Oldest Living Trees Nearly 50 Years Ago". The University of Arizona. Retrieved 31 October 2022.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Ross, Alex (20 January 2020). "The Past and the Future of the Earth's Oldest Trees". The New Yorker. Retrieved 26 October 2022.
- ^ Glausiusz, Josie (24 October 2022). "Old trees have much to teach us". Nature. 610: 623–624. Retrieved 2 November 2022.
- ^ a b c Oatman-Stanford, Hunter. "Read My Rings: The Oldest Living Tree Tells All". Collectors Weekly. Retrieved 2 November 2022.
External links
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