Áskell Löve


 * This article is about the Icelandic botanist who has the surname, Löve. For more uses of "love", see Love (disambiguation)

Áskell Löve was an Icelandic botanist who was particularly active in the Arctic. He studied ferns, spermatophytes, mycology, and plant evolution.

Beginning in 1937, Löve studied botany at Lund University in Lund, Sweden. In 1942, he received his PhD in botany, and his D.Sc. degree in genetics the year after. From 1941 to 1945, Löve became a research associate at Lund University and a geneticist at the University of Iceland. He married his student and colleague, Doris Löve née Wahlén. Together, in 1945, they moved back to Iceland where he served as director of the Institute of Botany and Plant Breeding at the University of Iceland. Then, Löve and his wife moved to North America, where he became associate professor of botany at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. In 1956, he became the Professeur de Recherches at the Université de Montréal, and in 1964 became the professor of biology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, which he remained until 1974.

In 1963, Löve was awarded a Guggenheim fellow and was elected a member of the Icelandic Academy of Sciences. He was the co-founder of the Flora Europaea project. He retained his Icelandic citizenship until he died in 1994.

Löve was particularly interested in the chromosome numbers of plants. He published several accounts in this field, including editing over one hundred chromosome number reports published in the journal, Taxon. He made a major contribution to the evolution and taxonomy of wheat-relatives of the Triticeae.

He also wrote papers about plant evolution from a more theoretical angle; an example: The biological species concept and its evolutionary structure.

He wrote some floras on Icelandic plants, including Íslenzk Ferðaflóra, which was illustrated by Dagny Tande Lid.

When citing a botanical name, he is abbreviated as Á.Löve.