Bigelow, Jacob (1787–1879)

US physician and botanist. His Florula Bostoniensis 1814 was a study of the plants growing within a ten mile radius of Boston. He later extended this study to cover many of the flora in other parts of New England and produced a standard manual of eastern American botany which is still popular today.

Bigelow was born in Sudbury, Massachusetts, and studied at Harvard University, graduating 1806. He then studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and obtained his MD 1810. He decided to work as a physician in Boston but also found time to lecture on botany.

He was made professor of materia medica at Harvard Medical School 1816 and became widely respected throughout the American scientific community for both his botanical and medical work, which had far-reaching effects upon the effective practice of medicine in America. His three-volume series American Medical Botany was published 1817, 1818, and 1820, and Discourse on Self-limited Diseases appeared 1835.