John Adolph Shafer

John Adolph Shafer was an American botanist who was born in Pittsburgh in 1863 and graduated from the Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy in 1881. He worked as a pharmacist until he married Martha Tischer in 1888. He became Custodian in the Section of Botany at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in 1897 and later became Museum Custodian at the New York Botanical Garden. Shafer made several important collecting trips to Cuba, Montserrat, Puerto Rico, Vieques, the Virgin Islands, Anegada, Argentina and Paraguay. He is commemorated in the names of the genera Shafera and Shaferocharis, as well as in several species he discovered.