Elsie Quarterman

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Elsie Quarterman (November 28, 1910 – June 9, 2014) was a prominent plant ecologist. She was a Professor Emerita at Vanderbilt University.

Quarterman was born on November 28, 1910, in Valdosta, Georgia. She earned a B.A. from Georgia State Women's College (now Valdosta State University) in 1932 and earned an M.A. in botany from Duke University in 1943. She completed her PhD at Duke University in 1949 with Henry J. Oosting. During her graduate work and afterward, she also collaborated extensively with Catherine Keever.

Quarterman is best known for her work on the ecology of Tennessee cedar glades. These herb-dominated plant communities on the shallow soils of limestone outcrops are globally rare habitats and contain many endemic plant species. She is also credited with rediscovering the native Tennessee coneflower, Echinacea tennesseensis, which was thought to be extinct, in 1969.^[1][2] Conservation efforts for the coneflower were successful, and it was delisted as an endangered species in 2011.^[3]

She supervised seven doctoral students, including Stewart Ware, a plant ecologist at the College of William and Mary, and Carol and Jerry Baskin, professors at the University of Kentucky.^[4]