Lee B. Kass

I received my doctoral training in plant anatomy, plant physiology and genetics at Cornell University. During six years of postdoctoral and research appointments, I concurrently taught classes part-time in my chosen fields. I then entered full-time teaching (24 credit hours per year) at Elmira College (1981-2000) and conducted research with students during summers as an adjunct and visiting professor at the L.H. Bailey Hortorium (BH), Cornell University. I established the Elmira College Herbarium in 1984, founded on the historical plant collections of T. F. Lucy. During my first sabbatical at BH in 1990, I completed the first edition of my Field Guide to the Common Plants of San Salvador Island (1991) subsequently revised & updated (2005, 2009, 2nd printing revised 2019). While a Fulbright Scholar and Visiting Professor at the College of the Bahamas (1996), I facilitated the establishment of the Bahamas National Herbarium (BNH), of which I am currently an associated staff member. I have been Visiting Professor at the herbaria of Michigan State University, and West Virginia University. Through 2014, I was Visiting Professor at BH & Department of Plant Biology at Cornell, then Adjunct Professor in the Plant Breeding & Genetics Section, where I focused my efforts on publishing scientific papers and completed my biography of Cornellian and Nobel Laureate Barbara McClintock (Kass 2013ff., 2024). I also continue consulting and investigating the biodiversity and reproductive biology of Bahamian Plants (Kass et al. 2018). I am a resource person for investigators on the Bahama Flora and historians working in the field of botany and genetics. I collaborated with Professor R. P. Murphy, Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics to write a Centennial history of the department (Murphy & Kass, 2007, 2011). I continued my focus on Department (now Section) history (Kass et al. 2019; Song & Kass 2022) and was appointed designated historian. I have guided undergraduate students in updating names for the T. F. Lucy Herbarium collection, which is currently housed at BH (Graver et al. 2005), and completed curating Lucy’s specimens for the Buffalo Museum of Science (Tilden et al. 2008; Kelloff & Kass 2018). I plan to continue studies of  historical figures in botany and genetics (Kass 2019, Dirig et al. 2021; Kass & Eshbaugh 2024). 

Selected Publications 

• Kass, Lee. B. 2024. From Chromosomes to Mobile Genetic Elements: The Life and Work of Nobel Laureate Barbara McClintock. CRC Press/ Routledge/Taylor and Francis Group, (www.routledge.com/9781032365329) .
• Kass, L. B. 2019/2009. An Illustrated Guide to Common Plants of San Salvador Island, Bahamas, 3rd edition, A. J. Kowalski, illustrator. Gerace Research Centre, San Salvador, Bahamas. 183 pp. (2nd printing with revisions issued Sept. 2019).
• Kass, L.B., E.H. Coe, M.N. Cook, M.E. Smith, J.L. Singer (Eds.). 2019. Founding of the Maize Genetics Cooperation News Letter at Cornell University: A 90th Anniversary Tribute. (Foreword by E.S. Buckler) [e-book] Internet-First University Press, Ithaca, New York, https://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/66550
• Kass, Lee B. (Ed.). 2013ff. Perspectives on Nobel Laureate Barbara McClintock’s publications (1926-1984): A Companion Volume. The Internet-First University Press. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/34897