(? – 2017)
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Herbarium (NCU) curates about 90 vascular plant specimens collected by Bernard Mikula; as we continue to catalog our collections it is likely that more will be found.
Herbaria across North America curate Mikula’s specimens: Angelo State University (SAT), Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT), Carnegie Melon Natural History Museum (CM), Chadron State College (CSCN), Clemson University (CLEMS), Northern Arizona University (ASC),Illinois Natural History Survey (ILLS), Indiana University (IND); Louisiana State University (LSU), Mississippi Museum of Natural Science (MMNS), Missouri Botanical Garden (MO), Old Dominion University (ODU), Troy University (TROY), University of Florida (FLAS), University of Louisiana at Monroe (NLU), University of Michigan (MICH), University of Mississippi (MISS), University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point (UWSP), Valdosta State University (VSC), and Virginia Polytechnic & State University (VPI).1
George Mason University (GMUF) has substantial holdings of Mikula specimens. By far the herbarium curating the most specimens collected by Mikula is the College of William & Mary (WILLI) where Mikula earned his Bachelor degree. In October, 2022 WILLI had cataloged about 4300 vascular plant specimens collected by Mikula.1
Bernard Mikula was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania and served in the submarine services in the United States Navy during World War II. He earned his Bachelor Degree from the College of William & Mary in Williamburg, Virginia in 1951.2 In 1956 he earned his doctorate from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri; the title of his thesis was “Variation in Sorghum vulgare var. drummondii (Steud.) Choiv. ”
He joined the faculty of Defiance College, a small liberal arts college associated with the United Church of Christ in Defiance Ohio, in 1960 He was known for leading botany field trips to the Big Bend area of Texas on other locations in the southwestern US during Defiance College’s winter term. He was instrumental in obtaining the funds to construct the Kettering Genetics Center and Greenhouse in the 1960’s.3 He retired from teaching in 1989.2
Bernard Mikula died in 2017.2
PUBLICATIONS:
Mikula, Bernard C. 1961. “Progressive Conversion of R-Locus Expression in Maize.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 47 (4): 566–71. http://www.jstor.org/stable/70662.
Mikula, Bernard Carl. 1956. Variation in Sorghum vulgare var. drummondii (Steud.) Choiv. Doctoral thesis, Washington University, Saint Louis, Missouri.
Baldwin, J. T., Jr., Bernice M. Speese, and Bernard Mikula. 1949. Chromosomes of Trillium pusillum Michx. var. virginianum Fernald. Rhodora 51(511): 368.
SOURCES:
1. SERNEC Data Portal. 2022. http//:sernecportal.org/index.php. Accessed on October 02.
2. Sedlock, Barb. 2017. In Memoriam, Dr. Bernard Mikula. Defiance College, Pilgrim Library, Archives Blog. https://pilgrimlibrary.wordpress.com/2017/03/24/in-memoriam-dr-bernard-mikula/ accessed 2 October 2022.
3. Anonymous. 2017. Mikula-Frey Science Initiative: The Renovation of the Greenhouse and Genetics Center. http://www.defiance.edu/magazine/winter-2016/winter-2016-5-mikula-frey-science-initiative.pdf accessed 2 October 2022.