The collection consists mainly of colored slides (in 5 slide boxes) Hohn took of people (researchers, students, and Boy Scouts), various buildings, lighthouses, boats, shores, wildlife, water, and flora on Beaver Island, 1960, 1988, and undated. Some slides of nearby Garden Island are also included. The slides are organized chronologically, since many of them lack additional identifying information.
Also included are several folders of Biographical Information about Hohn, 1959, 1981; his Correspondence with CMU officials, 1961-1986; and printoffs from the CMU Biological Station website, 2006.
Processing Note: A large number of slides from foreign countries and other states, as well as completely unidentified slides were withdrawn from the collection during processing.
Biography:
Matthew H. Hohn was born on November 9, 1920. He earned a B.S. in education from Indiana State University-Indiana, Pennsylvania, and both a M.S. and a Ph. D. in economic botany from Cornell University in 1949 and 1951, respectively. He worked as the Curator of Limnology at the Academy of Natural Science in Philadelphia, 1952-1959, and as an Associate Professor biology at Bloomsburg State College, now Bloomsburg University, 1959-1961. [Limnology is the scientific study of bodies of water.]
On September 1, 1961 he was hired as an Assistant Professor at Central Michigan University (CMU) in the Dept. of Biology. Hohn was promoted to full Professor in 1965 and as Coordinator of the CMU Biological Station on Beaver Island, Michigan, in 1967. He retired from CMU in 1986. After retirement, he lived in St. James on Beaver Island.
Hohn’s research interests were the taxonomy and ecology of diatoms and water quality studies in the U.S., Peru, Canada, and South America. He also researched plankton diatoms from Lake Erie, 1938-1965, and their relation to the eutrophication of the lake. [Eutrophication is the increase in nutrients in a body of water.] Hohn was a member of a number of professional and academic organizations and had many publications. Several of his publications are available in the CMU Libraries and a number of his articles are available on-line.
By 1961 he was married to Jane Eleanor Hohn (born November 4, 1921). According to the Social Security Death Index, Matthew died on March 18, 1999. Jane survived him and lived in Florida in 2006. (This information is from the collection.)