Biography Born in 1822 in Snainton, Scarborough, England, the fourth of ten children. With his family migrated to the U.S. the following year and settle in Oriskany, New York. He left school at twelve and is used in a warehouse. Will taking an interest in botany and get books from the field, and one could not buy them, copy them manually. This interest extends cuanodd meets Peter D. Knieskern, another naturalist Vasey invited to start a correspondence with botanists. Until 1870 maintains an extensive correspondence and collects a large number of specimens both of Oneida County and later of McHenry County, but not publish anything of scientific significance until the 1870s. Vasey married Martha Jane Scott in 1846, having graduated the same year deel “Berkshire Medical Institute with an MD, and quickly move to and settle in Ringwood, Illinois. In 1854 he opened a general store to support his family of 7, four children and mother.Founding member in 1858 will be the “Illinois Natural History Society, and writes prolifically for the society and the Prairie Farmer. He had two more children in 1861 but in 1864 lost the youngest of pertussis. When his wife begins to feel very weak, Vasey moved his family to Richview, but in vain, since Martha died in 1866. After a short time without writing, will marry a widow, but drags financial problems, while John W. Powell invites you to participate in an expion in 1868. It is enormously exciting scientific adventure. Entomologist and Botanist ed before being curator of the Museum of Natural History in the Illinois State University. But resigned that position to succeed Charles C. Botanical Parry as Chief of the USDA. Quickly getting down to work to improve the poor state of the “National Herbarium”, and also organizes exhibitions of forest resources for the Centennial Exposition (Philadelphia Exposition of 1876).The optimization of the herbarium, housed in the Smithsonian Institution, is considered the crowning of his career, particularly his collection Agrostologists, which was a specialist in 1889 the Institute is appointed Honorary Curator. As Chief launches Botanical Contributions to the United States National Herbarium. With George Thurber explores the Poaceae to the Flora of North America by A. Gray and Torrey. Receive an honorary MA in 1864 from Illinois Wesleyan University. In 1869 it made a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in 1892, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for that year is representative to the International Botanical Congress dee 1892 in Genoa, where he would serve as vice president.In his published work, his various monographs of U.S. pasture where Ulti part of which is published postmorem, one of the most remarkable, especially its Agricultural Grasses of the United States, 1884, and his work descriptive unpublished species that accumulated in the herbarium, a work complete just one week before his death in 1893, of peritonitis.