Daniel Cady Eaton (b. September 12, 1834, d. June 29, 1895), a
Yale graduate, completed his graduate work at Harvard University, where
he studied under Asa Gray, and returned to Yale to become one of the
first professors of botany in the United States and Curator of the Yale
Herbarium for 31 years. Eaton, whose special area of research was
ferns, produced the 2-volume Ferns of North America, illustrated in color by Charles Faxon and J.H. Emerton. These 2 volumes are housed in the Division of Botany’s Yale Herbarium at the Yale Peabody Museum.
Eaton’s botanical interests were far ranging, and in the 1860s his collecting interests led him to Utah. He also contributed extensive floristic accounts to the United States Mexican Boundary Survey, Clarence King’s Geological Exploration of the 40th Parallel, George Wheeler’s Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundreth Meridian, and the Geological Survey of California.