[1] It was named for Benjamin Bussey, who, in 1835, endowed the establishment of an undergraduate school of agriculture and horticulture and donated land in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts that became the Arnold Arboretum.

[2][3] James Drummond Dole obtained a bachelor in agriculture at the Bussey Institute before moving to Hawaii and developing pineapple production and the canning industry there.

[4] Alfred Kinsey, an American biologist who became famous for his work on human sexuality, studied at the Bussey Institute under famed entomologist William Morton Wheeler.

[5] Edward Murray East, a pioneer in plant genetics, also worked there when he studied Mendelian inheritance.

[6] The geneticist William E. Castle worked there from 1908 until it closed in 1936, first on the genetics of fruit flies and also on hooded rats, studying basic evolution.