Ida Kaplan Langman Papers

Collection

Identifier: ANSP-Coll-1009

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The Ida Kaplan Langman Papers consist primarily of incoming correspondence Langman received regarding botanical collecting in Mexico in the 1940s and 1950s and related bibliographic projects. Botanists Langman corresponded with and represented in the collection include Helia Bravo Hollis, Margery C. Carlson, Joseph Ewan, Maximino Martínez, Faustino Miranda González, Helen O’Gorman, and Jerzy Rzedowski Rotter. Also included is correspondence from other researchers active in Mexico in the mid-twentieth century such as Frans Blom (archaeology), Gertrude Duby Blom (anthropology), María Teresa Chávez Campomanes (library science), and Enriqueta García Amaro (climate science). The collection also contains plant collecting lists and notebooks, photographs, and other records related to Langman’s field work in Mexico and Monroe County, Pennsylvania and Langman’s bibliographic work on A Selected Guide to the Literature on the Flowering Plants of Mexico (1964). There is a small amount of records, namely obituaries collected after Langman’s death in 1991. The bulk of the collection is in English and Spanish with a small amount of material in Portuguese and German.

Dates

1933-1994

Creator

Langman, Ida Kaplan (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

The Ida Kaplan Langman Papers are the physical property of the Library and Archives, Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University. Materials in this collection may be governed by copyright. Researchers are responsible for determining the identity of rights holders and obtaining approval from them.

Biographical / Historical

Ida Kaplan Langman (1904-1991) was a botanist and bibliographer. Langman was born in Nezhin, Ukraine and immigrated to Philadelphia as an infant. Langman spent 35 years working as a teacher for the Philadelphia School District and in April 1950, the Board of Education assigned Langman to teach in the department of education at the Academy of Natural Sciences. Langman received a Bachelor of Science in education in 1930 and a Master of Science in botany in 1947, both from the University of Pennsylvania.

Ida Langman began conducting botanical fieldwork in the 1930s in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, and is believed to have found Juncus greenei also known as Green’s rush for the first time in the commonwealth. Langman made two expeditions to Mexico to collect plants and conduct bibliographic work, first from 1939 to 1941 and again from 1948 to 1949. Langman worked for over 20 years on a comprehensive bibliography A Selected Guide to the Literature on the Flowering Plants of Mexico, published in 1964.

Ida Langman became the first leader of the Index Nominum Genericorum Project at the Smithsonian Institute in the late 1960s. She was elected a Corresponding Member of the Academia Nacional de Ciencias de Mexico and was awarded a medal for her contributions to Mexican botany by the Botanical Society of Mexico in 1972. Langman also served as an associate bibliographer at the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation.

A few thousand botanical specimens collected or co-collected by Langman are held in the herbarium of the Academy of Natural Sciences (PH).

Three plant species, Fleischmanniopsis langmaniae, Lopezia langmanae, and Stachys langmaniae are named after Ida Kaplan Langman.

Extent

1.65 linear feet (2 boxes + 1 map folder)

Language of Materials

English

Spanish; Castilian

Portuguese

German

Additional Description

Arrangement

The collection is arranged in two series as follows:

Series 1: Correspondence, 1933-1983

Series 2: Field work and other records, 1934-1994

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Transferred from the Botany Department and donated by Ida Kaplan Langman, Mae K. Millstone and David Millstone between 1973 and 2024.

Related Materials

Francis Whittier Pennell Correspondence, Coll 209, Library and Archives, Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Philadelphia. Pennsylvania.

Botany Department Records, Coll 114, Library and Archives, Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Philadelphia. Pennsylvania.

ANSP Botany Herbarium (PH)

Ida Kaplan Langman Scrapbook, Am .0877, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Ida Langman Collection, Collection 179, Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Processing Information

Collection processed and finding aid prepared in February 2024 by Jessica M. Lydon, Brooke Dolan Archivist. Collection previously refoldered by Library and Archives staff in 2019.