Descriptive Entry

These papers consist of incoming and outgoing correspondence (1946-1951) that documents, in part, the history of the United States National Museum, Department of Botany, Division of Cryptogams, while George Albert Llano was an associate curator with the Division (1948-1951), as well as Llano's scientific activities and personal matters. Material includes correspondence with botanists; curators of herbaria; superintendents of national parks; departmental staff members; publishers; and friends; regarding the examination, identification, and reports of lichens and mosses sent to the Division; exchange of lichen collections; taxonomy; requests to attend scientific meetings; requests to loan botanical specimens from other herbaria; Llano's field work (1949) collecting lichens in arctic Alaska; publication of manuscripts; reviewing articles; personal matters pertaining to the scientific activities of friends; references to colleagues; publication problems; and problems concerning the retention of specimens by other botanists, which prevented Llano from reviewing them as part of his endeavors to publish.

Historical Note

George Albert Llano was born in Havana, Cuba, on November 22, 1911. He attended Cornell, where he received a B.S. in 1955. Llano received his M.A. at Columbia (1939) and his Ph.D. in botany at Washington University in St. Louis (1949).

Llano was a biologist for the United States Department of Agriculture, soil conservation service, in New York from 1935 to 1937. He then taught at the Pennsylvania Military College (1940), Harvard (1943), and Washington University (1946-1948). In June 1948, Llano joined the staff of the United States National Museum, Department of Botany, as an associate curator in the Division of Cryptogams. He was to have general supervision of the lower cryptogams, excluding diatoms and fungi. In February 1951, Llano resigned from his position at the USNM in order to become an associate professor of botany at Maxwell Air Force Base. Most recently, Llano has been the program manager of the Polar Biology and Medical Offices at the National Science Foundation (1971- ).

Llano's botanical studies are concentrated on polar biology, especially lichenology and the economic uses of lichens. He received an Arctic Institute of North America fellowship (1949-1951), which is documented to some extent in these papers. Among Llano's writings is a monograph on the lichen family Umbilicariaceae as represented in the Western Hemisphere (1951), and "Utilization of Lichens in the Arctic and Subarctic." Llano is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.