Elwyn Meader

Elwyn Marshall Meader, born March 31, 1910, in Rochester, New Hampshire, and died July 19, 1996, was an American botanist and plant scientist who developed more than fifty new cultivars across crops including plums, peaches, squash, rutabagas, sweet corn, melons, watermelons, beans, peppers, pumpkins, nectarines, bush cherries, kiwis, persimmons, cranberries, raspberries and blueberries. He earned his degrees at the University of New Hampshire and Rutgers University and worked for the USDA and the University of New Hampshire, and the cucumber seeds he collected in Korea in 1948 became the foundation for modern hybrid cucumbers sold around the world. He also developed commercially important cultivars including the Golden Midget watermelon, Meader blueberry and Meader persimmon, and named the Miss Kim Lilac, bred from Korean wild lilac seed, after all the Miss Kims in Korea.