Botanist, Dean of the New York State College of Agriculture (at Cornell University).

A state College of Forestry was initially established at Cornell University in 1898. Due to unhappiness with Cornell's stewardship of land in the Adirondacks, however, the governor vetoed the state legislature's appropriation of funds for the College in 1903, and Cornell's President and Trustees halted instruction in the College and dismissed its faculty. A new New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University was funded by the state legislature in 1911. Advocates for the state College of Forestry at Syracuse argued that Cornell's forestry program had ended in 1903, leaving the field clear for a new state College of Forestry elsewhere. Advocates for Cornell argued that its College of Forestry had ceased its operations only because of the loss of funding, but that the original legislation establishing the state College of Forestry at Cornell had never been repealed, so the College should be at Cornell. Liberty Hyde Bailey, who at that point was a former Dean of the New York State College of Agriculture, had argued against the closure of the College of Forestry at Cornell in 1903, and continued to argue that the state College of Forestry should be at Cornell.