Sidney Waxman

Sidney Waxman (1923–2005) was an American botanist and horticulturist who served as Professor of Ornamental Horticulture at the University of Connecticut's main campus in Storrs for more than thirty years (1957-1991), continuing to work on his ornamentals long after retirement. His research interests included plant photoperiodism, tissue culture, and witches’ brooms. He founded UConn's experimental plant nursery and built a national reputation for cultivation of dwarf conifers from witch's brooms, developing and naming thirty-four distinct cultivars. He also cultivated Japanese umbrella pines, larches, cinnamon bark maple, hemlocks, and azaleas. Waxman raised more than 200,000 seedlings to create a total of forty cultivars.

Born in Providence in 1923, Waxman worked as a pipefitter at a shipyard in New London, Connecticut, before enlisting in the U.S. Navy and serving as an aircraft mechanic during World War II. He married Florence Dix in 1948 and pursued higher education through the G.I. Bill. At first planning to study mechanical engineering, Waxman earned a bachelor's degree in horticulture from the University of Rhode Island and a master's and doctorate, both in horticulture, at Cornell University. Specimens of his dwarf pine varieties are planted all over the Storrs campus, and a garden planted beside the W.B. Young Building in honor of his research has a collection of his famous introductions. hold the largest witch's broom collection of dwarf conifers in North America.

In recognition of his horticultural endeavors, Waxman received the Jackson Dawson Medal from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, the Award of Merit from the International Plant Propagators Society, and awards from the New England Nursery Association and other groups.