E(mma) Lucy Braun, Professor Emeritus of Plant Ecology, University of Cincinnati, died March 5, 1971, aged 82 years. She was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on April 19, 1889. She received the A.B. degree in 1910, the M.A. (geology) in 1912, and the Ph.D. (botany) in 1914, all three degrees being conferred by the University of Cincinnati. She was an assistant in geology at the University of Cincinnati during 1910-13; then, in botany at the same institution, she was assistant during 1914-17, instructor during 1917-23, assistant professor during 1923-27, associate professor during 1927-46, and Professor of Plant Ecology during 1946-48, becoming Professor Emeritus in 1948. The early papers of the young Dr. Braun show the direction her research interests would take: The Physiography of the Cincinnati Region, published in 1916, and The Vegetation of the Mineral Springs Region of Adams County, Ohio, published in 1928. By 1937, Dr. Braun had looked at the trees about her well enough so that she could publish A Key to the Deciduous Trees of Ohio, Native and Planted, in Winter Condition. Dr. Braun became a member of Section B of The Ohio Academy of Science in 1920 and fellow in 1921, and was president in 1933. Long afterward (1963) she was made an Honorary Life Member. Dr. Braun was also a member of the Ecological Society of America. In 1935 she was elected vice president of this society, and in 1950 she became president. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1943 for the study of the ecology and species composition of the eastern deciduous forest, a fellowship that was renewed in 1944. The results of this study, the Deciduous Forests of Eastern North America, appeared in book form in 1950, which is considered an authoritative work on the origin and structure of the forests of the area. Dr. Braun had spent 25 years in study, preparing to write the book, and had traveled some 65,000 miles collecting data and seeing for herself how it was. She had cooperated with the forest soils subsection of the Soil Science Society of America and with the United States Forest Service. In the meantime she retired from the University in 1948 and she was free to write the book. Honors began to come. Dr. Braun received the Mary Soper Pope Medal, a reward of merit in the field of botany, given by the Cranbrook Institute of Sciences, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in 1952. In 1953, she was made an Honorary Life Member of the Cincinnati Wild Flower Preservation Society, which she had founded in 1917. Another of Dr. Braun's papers, The Phytography of Unglaciated Eastern United States and its Interpretation, appeared in 1955. Following this came more recognition when, in 1956, Dr. Braun was one of 50 American botanists to receive a Certificate of Merit from the Botanical Society of America. In 1961, she was again cited as one of 69 distinguished American botanists by the same Botanical Society. Her next book, The Woody Plants of Ohio, Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Climbers, Native, Naturalized and Escaped, appeared in 1961. This work was listed by Dr. Braun as a contribution to the vascular flora of Ohio, and it was done with the aid of a grant from the National Science Foundation. In 1964, Dr. Braun received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Cincinnati. The next year she was subsidized by the National Science Foundation to study the vegetation of the Fort Hill State Memorial. In 1965, the Ohio Chapter of The Nature Conservancy named the recently purchased Lynx Prairie of Adams County, Ohio, in her honor— the E. Lucy Braun Lynx Prairie Preserve. Dr. Braun had been instrumental in saving this prairie originally, on behalf of the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History. In 1967, Dr. Braun's latest book appeared. It was The Monocotyledonae, Cat-tails to Orchids, in which the section on the Graminaceae was prepared by Dr. Clara G. Weishaupt, and the original drawings were made by Elizabeth Dalve and Elizabeth King. This work was supported by The National Science Foundation and represents Volume I of the series on the Vascular Flora of Ohio. Her final publication was An Ecological Survey of the Vegetation of Fort Hill State Memorial, Highland County, Ohio, which was published only recently. During the years, E. Lucy Braun also found time to edit the Wild Flower Magazine, Botany, and The Naturalist's Guide to the Americas. She would have been happy to continue the study of the flora about her, but the end had come. We who knew her along the way remember her with admiration and kind regard. Dr. Braun was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Ecological Society of America, the Botanical Society of America, the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, and the British Ecological Society. Her fields of interest included forest ecology, geographic distribution of plants, and taxonomy of vascular plants.

The Ohio Journal Of Science 71(4): 247, July 1971.