Alice Withrow

Alice Victoria Phillips Withrow (September 5, 1907 – April 28, 1998) was an American botanist, plant physiologist and researcher of plant photochemistry. Her focus of study was "the effect of light on the flowering and reproduction of plants" and along with her husband she developed a pioneering method of hydroponics.

Biography Withrow was born on September 5, in Louisville, Kentucky to Roscoe M. and Ollie (Snawder) Phillips. She attended Butler University (B.A. degree, botany, 1929) and University of Cincinnati (M.A. degree, 1931), where her master's thesis "Life forms and leaf size classes of certain plant communities of the Cincinnati region" was overseen by Emma Lucy Braun and published 1932 in the journal Ecology. In 1931, she married Robert Bruce Withrow. Their honeymoon trip was the journey to Purdue University where they both had new jobs and she later completed her Ph.D.

During World War II Withrow and her husband were consulting scientists for the U.S. Air Force on the problem of growing plants without soil, in part so that the military could "grow perishable vegetables on sandy bases in the Pacific." A 2006 timeline of the history of hydroponic growing credited Withrow and her husband with introducing "inert gravel" as a growing medium, and noted that in 1945 the Air Force constructed a hydroponic farm on Wake Island that produced tomatoes, string beans, sweet corn and lettuce. In late 1945 she lectured in Chicago on "soil-less culture and the effect of various spectrum colors on the growth rate of plants." After the war, the Withrows published a paper comparing the use of mercury, incandescent and the new fluorescent lamps for growing plants. The Withrows' research was featured in the science magazine Popular Mechanics in October 1946.

In 1948 the Withrows relocated to the Smithsonian.

Withrow wrote the preface to a posthumously published book edited by her husband, Photoperiodism and related phenomena in plants and animals. In the 1960s and 1970s, Withrow led the educational materials and instruction development division of the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Withrow had one child, Anne V. Withrow-Dalager (1934–1996). Withrow died on April 29, 1998, in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Selected works