Biography
He was born in Copenhagen as a son of the botanist M.P. Porsild. He grew up on the Arctic Station in Qeqertarsuaq, West Greenland, where he acted as assistant to his father. Between 1936-1945, he was curator at the National Museum of Canada, Ottawa, and from 1945 to 1967 he was head of the department of botany there. He authored over 100 scientific articles on the flora of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and of the Rocky Mountains, as well as numerous popular papers and books, including important floras of Canada's Arctic and northern regions.
He made over 25,000 plant collections (numbers), resulting in over 100,000 specimens which are deposited in the National Herbarium of Canada (CAN) at the Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa, and in other herbaria around the world.
He borrowed the term pingo from Inuit and made it a scientific and vernacular term (first used in 1938). Porsild Pingo in Tuktoyaktuk is named in his honor. So is Mount Porsild in the Yukon Territory, Canada.
The Canadian Botanical Association awards annually the 'Alf Erling Porsild Award', in recognition of the best paper published in the field of systematics and phytogeography that year by a graduate student in a Canadian university or a Canadian student in a foreign university.
Porsild was awarded the Massey Medal by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in 1966.
Read more about this topic: Erling Porsild
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