Name Adolph Edward Died 1942, Luzon, Philippines | Education Stanford University | |
Adolph Daniel Edward Elmer (1870 – April 17, 1942) was an American botanist and plant collector.
Elmer was born in 1870 in Van Dyne, Wisconsin, United States. He was educated at Washington State College and earned an A.M. from Stanford University in 1903. He made extensive plant collections in the Philippines from 1904 to 1927, and also in California, Borneo, and New Guinea. He was editor of Leaflets of Philippine Botany, where he published more than 1,500 new species.
Despite the urging of family members, Elmer and his wife, Emma Osterman Elmer (1867–1956), refused to leave American-controlled Manila after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Elmer died of natural causes on April 17, 1942 or in July in a concentration camp in the Philippines after being taken captive by Japanese forces in the Battle of Bataan. Emma Osterman Elmer survived the battle and the Bataan Death March and returned to the United States after the war.