William C. Coker was born October 24, 1872, in Hartsville, South Carolina. The Coker family was prosperous, with his father, Major James Lide Coker, being one of South Carolina’s most successful businessmen. Coker’s youthful interest in nature was encouraged by his family.
Coker graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1894 and proceeded to spend several years working for the Atlantic National Bank in Wilmington, North Carolina, before deciding to return to academia. He began his graduate work at Johns Hopkins University in 1897 and received his PhD with high distinction in 1901.
In the fall of 1902, Coker joined the UNC faculty as an associate professor of botany. He was the school’s first professor of botany and would be the chair of the botany department for 36 years. While Coker’s primary teaching interest was general botany, his publishing history shows a marked interest in mycology. Of the 137 publications he produced over his career, 58 were related to fungi. He was elected chairman of the Mycological Section of the Botanical Society of America in 1927, as well as vice-president of the Mycological Section of the Sixth International Plant Congress.
Coker also had an interest in and talent for landscape architecture. One way in which this manifested was the creation of the Coker Arboretum. In 1903, shortly after he arrived at UNC, Coker obtained permission from university authorities to plant a teaching collection in a five-acre area of campus that had previously been a damp pasture. The arboretum is managed by the North Carolina Botanical Gardens and, as of 2024, contains more than 600 species of plant life.
Coker worked at UNC until his retirement in 1945. He passed away on June 27, 1953.