Gertrude Simmons Burlingham

Gertrude Simmons Burlingham (April 21, 1872 – January 11, 1952) was an early-20th-century mycologist best known for her work on American Russula and Lactarius and pioneering the use of microscopic spore features and iodine staining for species identification. a farm outside Mexico, New York, on April 21, 1872, as the only child of Alfred Burlingham and his wife Mary Simmons. While a student at Syracuse, she became a member of Kappa Alpha Theta. After graduating, she took a position as a biology teacher at Ovid Union School in Ovid, New York, where she quickly rose to become preceptress, or principal. She moved to Binghamton, New York, in 1898 to teach high school biology, and then to New York City for a postgraduate degree at Columbia University. After finishing her Ph.D. in 1908 she taught biology at Brooklyn's Eastern District High School until her retirement in 1934. Despite earning a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1908, she never taught at college level. Russula specialist Ray Fatto credited Burlingham with noting the importance of spore ornamentation in separating the species of this notoriously troublesome genus. Although some authors, like Michael Kuo, joining there several other retired mycologists, and collaborated primarily with Henry Curtis Beardslee (she would also name a Russula after him, and write his obituary).