William Jackson Hooker.
Sir William Jackson Hooker, FRS (July
6, 1785—August 12, 1865)
was an English botanist.
Biography
Hooker was born in Norwich. His father, Joseph Hooker of Exeter, a member of the same family as the celebrated theologian Richard Hooker, devoted much of his time to the study of German literature and the cultivation of curious plants. The son was educated at
the high school of Norwich, on leaving which his independent means enabled him to travel and to take up as a recreation the study
of natural history, especially ornithology and
entomology. He subsequently confined his attention to botany, on the recommendation of
Sir James Edward Smith, whom he had consulted respecting a rare moss.
His first botanical expedition was made in Iceland, in the summer of 1809, at the suggestion of Sir Joseph Banks; but the natural history
specimens which he collected, with his notes and drawings, were lost on the homeward voyage through the burning of the ship, and
the young botanist himself had a narrow escape with his life. A good memory, however, aided him to publish an account of the
island, and of its inhabitants and flora (Tour in Iceland, 1809), privately circulated in
1811, and reprinted in 1813.
In 1810-1811 he made extensive preparations, and sacrifices which
proved financially serious, with a view to accompany Sir Robert Brownrigg to
Ceylon, but the disturbed state of the island led to the abandonment of the projected
expedition. In 1814 he spent nine months in botanizing excursions in France, Switzerland and northern Italy, and
in the following year he married Maria Dawson Turner, the eldest daughter of Dawson
Turner, banker, of Great Yarmouth, and sister-in-law of Francis Palgrave.
Settling at Halesworth, Suffolk, he devoted himself to
the formation of his herbarium, which became of world-wide renown among botanists. In
1816 the British Jungermanniae, his first scientific work, was published. This was succeeded
by a new edition of William Curtis's Flora
Londinensis, for which he wrote the descriptions (1817-1828); by a description of the Plantae cryptogamicae of Alexander
von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland; by the Muscologia , a very complete account of the mosses of Britain and Ireland, prepared in conjunction with Thomas Taylor (1818); and by his Musci exotici (2 vols.,
1818-1820), devoted to new foreign mosses and other cryptogamic plants.
In 1820 he accepted the regius professorship of botany in the
University of Glasgow where he soon became popular as a lecturer, his style being
both clear and ready. The following year he brought out the Flora Scotica, in which the natural method of arrangement of
British plants was given with the artificial. He worked with the Glasgow botanist and
lithographer Thomas Hopkirk to establish the Royal Botanic Institution of Glasgow and to lay out and develop the Glasgow Botanic Gardens .
It was mainly by Hooker's exertions that botanists were appointed to the government expeditions. While his works were in
progress his herbarium received large and valuable additions from all parts of the globe, and his position as a botanist was thus
vastly improved. He was made a knight of Hanover in 1836 and in
1841 he was appointed director of the Royal Botanic
Gardens, Kew, on the resignation of William Aiton. Under his direction the gardens
expanded from 10 to 75 acres (4,000 to 304,000 m²), with an arboretum of 270 acres (840,000 m²), many new glass-houses
were erected, and a museum of economic botany was established. He was engaged on the Synopsis
filicum with John Gilbert Baker when he was attacked by a throat disease then
epidemic at Kew.
He was succeeded at Kew Gardens by his son Joseph Dalton Hooker, a rare example
of an outstanding man succeeded in his post by an equalling outstanding son.
- Exotic Flora, indicating such of the specimens as are deserving cultivation (3 vols., 1822-1827)
- Account of Sabine's Arctic Plants (1824)
- Catalogue of Plants in the Glasgow Botanic Garden (1825)
- the Botany of Parry's Third Voyage (1826)
- The Botanical Magazine (38 vols,, 1827-1865)
- Icones Filicum, in concert with Dr R. K. Greville (2 vols., 1829-1831)
- British Flora, of which several editions appeared, undertaken with Dr G. A. W. Arnott, &c. (1830)
- British Flora Cryptogamia (1833)
- Characters of Genera from the British Flora (1830)
- Flora Boreali-Americana (2 vols., 1840), being the botany of British North America collected in Sir John Franklin's voyage
- The Journal of Botany (4 vols., 1830-1842)
- Companion to the Botanical Magazine (2 vols., 1835-1836)
- Icones plantarum (10 vols., 1837-1854)
- the Botany of Beechey's Voyage to the Pacific and Behring's Straits
(with Dr Arnott, 1841)
- the Genera Fiticum (1842), from the original colored drawings of F. Bauer, with additions and descriptive
letterpress
- The London Journal of Botany (7 vols., 1842-1848)
- Notes on the Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of the Erebus and Terror (1843)
- Species filicum (5 vols., 1846-1864), the standard work on this subject
- A Century of Orchideae (1846)
- Journal of Botany and Kew Garden Miscellany (9 vols., 1849-1857)
- Niger Flora (1849)
- Victoria Regia (1851)
- Museums of Economic Botany at Kew (1855)
- Filices exoticae (1857-1859)
- The British Ferns (1861-1862)
- A Century of Ferns (1854)
- A Second Century of Ferns (1860-1861).
External links
References
- Allen, Mea The Hookers of Kew 1795-1911.
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia
Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public
domain.
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