Robert Earle Buchanan

Robert Earle Buchanan (March 27, 1883, Cedar Rapids, Iowa – 1973, Ames, Iowa) was an American bacteriologist and a professor and administrator at Iowa State University. He is known for his work on bacterial taxonomy. He graduated in 1904 with a B.S. and in 1906 with an M.S. from Iowa State College (now named Iowa State University). He worked as an undergraduate as a student assistant to Louis Hermann Pammel, whom he accompanied on botanical surveys. He was from 1904 to 1906 as teaching assistant in bacteriology under Pammel. written under the supervision of Edwin O. Jordan, deals with nitrogen-fixing bacteria that live in the nodules of a variety of legume species. In 1918 he was the president of the Society of American Bacteriologists (renamed in 1960 the American Society for Microbiology). In 1935 he was the president of the Iowa Academy of Science.

He married Estelle Denis Fogel in 1910. Their son Joseph Hall Buchanan became a patent attorney and a brigadier-general.

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