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About Seaweeds

Paul Silva

“On October 4, 1941, we took our first field trip, to Whites Point near San Pedro. I was amazed and even ecstatic at the sight of so many beautiful seaweeds growing on the rocks at low tide. I had gone to the beach innumerable times, but always on sandy shores and never at an extreme low tide. I changed academic pathways immediately, from higher plants to marine algae.”

Paul C. Silva (1922–2014) remembered so clearly when he fell in love. His subsequent illustrious career revolved around service to phycological societies, to the International Botanical Congress and to the University of California, Berkeley, Herbarium, where he was curator of algae for 50 years. He was an expert in nomenclature, the intricate lineages of names and their proper assignment, and his encyclopedic knowledge was generously shared with those who created or changed names of algae. His life’s work, the Index Nominum Algarum, is a database comprising 200,000 names of algae—fossil and extant, unicellular and multicellular, fresh and marine.

Although he specialized in the genus Codium, a globally distributed genus, Paul’s heart remained on our Pacific coast. His thousands of specimens resulting from numerous collecting trips throughout the California Channel Islands and along the “Lost Coast” of northern California represent some of the finest we have. His profound knowledge of the history and diversity of our beautiful West Coast seaweeds lives on in his brilliant publications and specimens.

Kathy Ann Miller

University Herbarium

University of California at Berkeley

Paul Silva, whose contributions to our under-standing of seaweeds are enormous. Photo by Kathy Ann Miller