Olga Korhoven Lakela (March 11, 1890 – May 17, 1980) was a Finnish-American botanist and educator noted for identifying many species in the genera Heuchera and Tiarella. [1] [2] She emigrated to the United States from Finland in 1906. [1] [3] Lakela received her doctorate in botany from the University of Minnesota in 1932. [3] Lakela founded the herbarium at the University of Minnesota Duluth, which is named after her, and worked there until 1935. [3] [4] [5] After her retirement from the University of Minnesota Duluth in 1958, [1] [3] she was the curator of the University of South Florida's herbarium from 1960 [3] until her retirement there in 1973. [6] [7]
The herbarium is named after Olga Lakela, a Finnish immigrant who moved to Duluth when she was a girl at the turn of the 20th century.... She founded the Herbarium in 1935. Olga went on to become the first head of the Biology Department back in the 1940s when Duluth State Teachers College became the University of Minnesota-Duluth.
Approximately half of our specimens were collected by Dr. Lakela, and her extensive work in St. Louis and Lake counties of Minnesota is summarized in her book, A Flora of Northeastern Minnesota (1965, University of Minnesota Press).