Bailey, Liberty Hyde (Jr) (1858–1954)

US horticulturist and botanist. He advised the US president Franklin D Roosevelt on his agricultural policy and ran Roosevelt's Country Life Commission (1908), which aimed to improve the standard of life and living conditions of rural communities. His own research included work on Carex and Cucurbita (plants of the gourd family). His works include the four volume Cyclopedia of American Agriculture and the six volume Cyclopedia of American Horticulture.

Bailey was born in South Haven Township, Michigan. During his childhood he became interested in natural history and geology. As a young man of 19 he was given a place at Michigan State Agricultural College, where he first encountered Charles Darwin's work on evolution. In 1882, after obtaining his BSc, he became a reporter in Illinois, but he quickly obtained the position of assistant curator of the Harvard University herbarium. In 1885, he was made the professor of horticulture and landscape gardening at Michigan State Agricultural College and was made professor of practical and experimental horticulture at Cornell University 1888–1913, where he made the practice of horticulture into a science.

As a botanist and horticulturist, he had a particular interest in agriculture and was appointed the first dean of the New York State College of Agriculture in 1904. He was then invited by the US Government to run Roosevelt's Country Life Commission. He founded the Liberty Hyde Bailey Hortorium at Cornell in 1935, and directed it until 1952.