Botanist, born in Norwich, Norfolk, E England, UK. A chance discovery of a rare moss (1805) led him into a career in botany. He collected specimens in Scotland (1806) and Iceland (1809), and wrote his Recollections of Iceland (1811). He became professor at Glasgow (1820), and the first director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew (1841), which he developed into the leading botanical institute in the world.
Sir William Jackson Hooker (July 6, 1785 – August 12, 1865) was an English botanist.
Biography
Hooker was born in Norwich. 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;
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.
Settling at Halesworth, Suffolk, he devoted himself to the formation of his herbarium, which became of world-wide renown among botanists.
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. 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. 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 succeeded at Kew Gardens by his son Joseph Dalton Hooker.
Other works
Hooker prepared or edited many works, the more important being the following:
Botanical Illustrations (1822) 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. (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).
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