Nathaniel Lord Britton (1857-1934) received the Puglsley Silver Medal for his services in founding the New York Botanical GArden. He was a botanist, taxonomist and first director in chief of the New York Botanical Garden. He was born on January 15,1857 at New Dorp, Staten Island, New York, the son of Jasper Alexander Hamilton Brottin and Harriet Lord Turner. His parents envisioned a religious career for their son; instead, John J. Crooke and John Strong Newberry, two all-round naturalists of Staten Island, nurtured his native curiosity about natural world and guided him easily into botanical career. In 1875 Britton began his undergraduate study under John Strong Newberry, who taught geology, minerology and paleobotany at Columbia. Soon after again at the instigation of Newberry and Crooke, Britton and his friend Arthur Hollick joined the Torrey Botanical Club.
Dr. Britton and Arthur Hollick worked as field assistants with the Geological Survey of New Jersey(1879-84) travelling to Wyoming Territory to collect fossils. They later published The flora of Richmond County, New York based on the botanical investigations of Staten Island. The Torrey Botanical Club circulated a public appeal in 1889 to establish a botanic garden and two years later by an act of the New York State legislature, the New York Botanical Garden was founded. In the decade of 1890's Britton stood at the pinnacle of a career in which his energy and acumen as a leader seemed boundless.
From 1896 to 1898 he published the landmark floristic study An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States and Canada. Financed by Judge Addison Brown, the work became as the Britton & Brown Illustrated Flora. Britton's own Botanical research and publication proceeded apace through the formative years of the instituition.