Orator F. Cook

Career

In 1891 Cook became a special agent of the New York State Colonization Society. He worked in Liberia, and in 1896, he was elected president of Liberia College. He held that position until 1898. That year he joined the United States Department of Agriculture as a plant scientist, and eventually became Principal Botanist and traveled throughout the world investigating crop species for the United States government. With Guy N. Collins, he made collecting trips to Puerto Rico in 1899 and 1901. Cook specialized in cotton and rubber plants and the classification of palms, particularly the palms of Hispaniola. He published almost four hundred books and articles during his career, and was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Science by Syracuse University in 1930. Cook served as Honorary Assistant Curator of Cryptogamic Collections at the United States National Herbarium from 1898 until 1948. Together with Lucien Marcus Underwood he was editor of the exsiccata work Hepaticae Americanae with 160 specimens (1887–93) and Hepaticae Americanae with 200 specimens (1887–99).

Cook also studied myriapods (millipedes, centipedes, and relatives), describing over 100 species and producing over 50 publications. In 1922, Cook and his colleague Harold Loomis described a species of millipede with more legs than any other organism then known on Earth: Illacme plenipes which possesses as many as 750 legs.

Cook was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Genetic Association, Botanical Society of America, Association of American Geographers, Washington Academy of Sciences, as well as the Cosmos Club, a private social club of Washington D.C.

The standard author abbreviation O.F.Cook is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.

Family

In 1892 Cook married the botanist Alice Carter, with whom he had two sons and two daughters. His son Robert Carter Cook became a geneticist.