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JOHN NATHANIEL COUCH 42 North Carolina as department chairman from 1944 to 1960. His success in this capacity, and the continuous support provided by his colleagues during such a long period of leadership, attests to the personal and professional traits of this gentleman and scholar. In these very active years, John Couch still found time and energy to serve several professional organizations as an officer, chair, or editor. He served as president of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society; secretary-treasurer, vice- president, and president of the Mycological Society of America; president of the North Carolina Academy of Sciences; vice-president of the Botanical Society of America; and chairman of its southeastern section. He also served as associate editor of Mycologia and as editor of the Journal of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society and was on the editorial board of Mycopathologia et Mycologia Applicata. His scholarship and research activities led to a variety of other honors, including his election to membership in the National Academy of Sciences (U.S.A.) in 1943, being named Kenan Professor of Botany at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1945, and being elected in 1955 an honorary foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of India. THE EARLY YEARS: FAMILY AND EDUCATION John Nathaniel Couch was born in Prince Edward County, Virginia, on October 12, 1896, to John Henry and Sally Terry Couch. His father was a Baptist minister and his mother a teacher. One of seven children, John's early education was influenced at home by his mother, a disciplined and aggressive teacher, and at seven different public schoolsâhis father following the calls of Baptist churches throughout several southern states. By John's high school years, the Couches resided in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, from where he traveled to Durham to attend high school.
JOHN NATHANIEL COUCH 43 Upon graduation in 1914, Trinity College in Durham (later to become Duke University) admitted John and, under a common practice at the time, provided a tuition-free education to him as the son of a minister. So, in the fall of 1914, as his parents moved on to another call, John the freshman moved in with an uncle in Durham and, with some financial help from home, began his higher education. For two years he studied mostly classical subjectsâ literature, history, language, and mathematics. He read widely and, like most college freshmen and sophomores, pondered where his interests and abilities lay. After narrowing his choices to law and medicine, John, during his third year at the university, had his first major exposure to natural science while studying biology and chemistry. His curiosity was awakened in Professor J. J. Wolfe's botany class and by a subsequent invitation to join the Biology Journal Club. A precursor of what ultimately would be John Couch's passion came with his first report to that club, "Edible and Poisonous Fungi." His interest in botany had become so keen that he asked to work in Professor Wolfe's laboratory for the summer, where his time was spent collecting and identifying freshwater algae under Wolfe's direction. His attraction to science now clear, John dropped thoughts of a career in law and transferred for his senior year to the University of North Carolina (UNC) in Chapel Hill. His goal was to prepare for admission to its medical school. However, at UNC his path crossed that of another botanist, this time the eminent botanist and mycologist W. C. Coker, whose work with fungi fascinated Couch. John's decision was made. Medicine, like law before, was no longer his choice. He would continue his education in graduate study with Professor Coker, and mycology would henceforth be forever enriched.
