Thomas Henry Kearney (1874–1956) spent the bulk of his career with the Bureau of Plant Industry at the United States Department of Agriculture, where he progressed from assistant physiologist to principal physiologist from 1900 to 1944. After retiring from the Bureau, he joined the California Academy of Science, where he worked until his death in 1956. His interest in cotton began with a trip to Egypt in 1902 with Thomas H. Means, where he studied the cultivation of Egyption cottons. Upon return to the United States (and after a series of other global research trips), he began researching cotton cultivation and agriculture of arid land in Arizona. He would go on to publish Flowering Plants and Ferns of Arizona which was co-written with Robert H. Peebles and would identify Kearney as a leading authority on Arizonian botany.