Mason, H. L. (Herbert Louis) (1896-1994) | University and Jepson Herbaria Archives, University of California, Berkeley

Herbert Louis Mason was born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin on January 3, 1896. He received his A. B. in 1921 from Stanford University and his M.A. in 1923 from the University of California at Berkeley. He was an instructor at Mills College from 1923 to 1925 and then returned to the University of California to receive his Ph. D. in Botany in 1932. In 1931 he married Lucile Roush, also a Berkeley graduate student in Botany. He was hired as instructor and assistant curator of the University Herbarium at Berkeley in 1933 and promoted to assistant professor and associate curator in 1934 and associate professor and curator in 1938. In 1941 he was promoted to professor of Botany and director of the herbarium. In 1957, he published A flora of the marshes of California based on surveys commissioned by the California Department of Fish and Game and conducted by Mason and his graduate students.

Herbert Mason was a member of the Biosystematists, Western Society of Naturalists, the Western Section of the Ecological Society of America, the Regional Parks Association, the California Botanical Society, and the American Society of Plant Taxonomists. He retired from Berkeley in 1963 and he and Lucile moved to Bellingham, Washington to live near their son, David.  Herbert Mason passed away in Bellingham in 1994.