Researchers name new algae species after inaugural poet Amanda Gorman
June 9 (UPI) — A group of researchers has named a new species of seaweed after Amanda Gorman, the poet of President Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration.
Boyce Thompson Institute researchers discovered the green algae – Gormaniella terricola – from central New York in 2020 and were going through a “dark period” amid a year of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 6 January 2021 at the U.S. Capitol as they searched for the name, researcher Fay-Wei Li said in a press release.
Li, an adjunct assistant professor at Cornell University’s School of Integrative Plant Science, said the group then found inspiration when Gorman delivered his poem, “The Hill We Climb” at Biden’s inauguration on January 20, finally deciding to name the genre after her.
“At a time when it was sometimes difficult to find meaning in our research, Amanda Gorman gifted us with this incredibly uplifting poem that gave us renewed hope in the lab,” he said.
Gorman became the youngest inaugural poet in United States history at the age of 22 when she delivered the poem which had the theme of unity at the center of the inauguration.
“And so we look up not to what stands between us, but to what stands before us. We have closed the gap because we know that to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside,” she read.
Li said Tanner Robinson, a graduate student working in the lab, was responsible for the decision to name the seaweed after Gorman.
“It wasn’t a political thing, it was just a really good poem,” Robinson said. “It was about taking on the challenges, and we had a very difficult year.”
The researchers said they discovered Gormaniella terricola by accident. Jessica Nelson, a former researcher in Li’s lab, said the green algae appeared in her petri dishes while she was harvesting hornwort seedlings in Potato Hill State Forest.
“We discovered a new species by accident, basically by paying attention to what we were looking at,” Robinson said. “I think we could learn a lot more things by just being more careful.”