Jacob Joshua Levison (1883 - 1961)

Jacob Joshua Levison (24 January 1883 - 1 January 1961) was a Latvian-American forester. Immigrating in 1893 from Riga, Latvia, he graduated Yale School of the Environment class of 1905 with a masters degree in forestry. In July of that year he was appointed a forest assistant by President Theodore Roosevelt as a charter member of the newly created US Forest Service. From 1907 through 1917, he served as chief forester for Brooklyn and the New York City Parks Department, planning and developing many of the city's large parks. Throughout fifty years of service, Mr. Levison was considered one of the definitive authors and lecturers on America's trees, forests and landscape architecture.