Robert Statham Williams (1859 – 1945)

Robert Williams was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He published a series of nature columns in a local paper when he was in his teens. He moved to Montana and built the first cabin in Great Falls. Columbia College gave him a grant to collect bryophytes in the area.¹⁾

Williams travelled over the Chilkoot Pass in 1898. He became a storekeeper and made a fortune. In 1898/99, he collected plants in his spare time and his extensive collection was the first of its kind made in the Klondike. He and his collection, travelled to New York in 1898 and he was hired by the New York Botanical Garden as a museum aide.²⁾

In 1901, Williams was sent to Bolivia and Peru to work as a botanist with an exploration party. Between 1903 and 1905, he was in the Philippines collecting plants on Luzon and Mindanao. In 1905, he was in Panama collecting exotic and local birds as well as plants. Williams became the assistant curator of the New York Botanical Garden in 1906 and stayed there, in different positions, to 1936. A genus of flowering plants, Williamsia, and two genera of mosses, Williamsia and Williamsiella, are named in his honour.³⁾