Alden Springer Crafts

Alden Springer Crafts (25 June 1897, Fort Collins, Colorado – 9 February 1990, Davis, California) was an American professor of botany, known as the first person in the United States to have the title "Weed Control Scientist" in academic employment. He was President of the American Society of Plant Physiologists for 1955, and President of the Weed Society of America (later renamed the Weed Science Society of America) for 1958–1960. Crafts was the editor of the Annual Review of Plant Physiology (now the Annual Review of Plant Biology) from 1957 to 1959.

Biography After graduating from Oakland High School. the sixth oldest high school in the state of California, Crafts matriculated in 1916 at the College of Agriculture of the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley). After completing one year of academic study, he left college to work as an agricultural laborer at the Kearney field station. In 1918 he and his two brothers, Andrew B. Crafts (1885–1966) and Henry Alonzo Crafts, Jr. (1889–1964), purchased a farm in Potter Valley near Ukiah, California. Alden Crafts worked on the farm until 1925 when he enrolled at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis). and in 1946 a full professor, retiring in 1964 as professor emeritus. 3rd edition, 1962). The fourth edition was published in 1975 with the title Modern Weed Control.

Crafts married Alice E. Hardesty (1903–1974) on June 25, 1926. His body was buried at Potter Valley Cemetery in Mendocino County, California.

Awards and honors 1938 — Guggenheim Fellowship for the academic year 1938–1939 1957 — Guggenheim Fellowship for the academic year 1957–1958