Benjamin Daydon Jackson

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Benjamin Daydon Jackson

Benjamin Daydon Jackson (born April 3, 1846 in Stockwell (London) , † October 12, 1927 in London ) was a British botanist , bibliographer and taxonomist . Its official botanical author abbreviation is “ BDJacks. "

Live and act

Jackson was already a member of the Linnean Society of London (Linné Society) at the age of 22 . He was the curator of the Linnean Collections .

Shortly before his death in 1882, Charles Darwin entrusted the director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, Joseph Dalton Hooker, with overall responsibility for the creation of the Index Kewensis , an index of all the names of flowering plants published between 1753 and 1885. Created a concept on which he was advised by leading botanists of the time, including George Bentham , Asa Gray, and John Ball . He chose Benjamin Daydon Jackson, who was secretary of the Linnean Society at the time, to be his author and editor. He had his Guide to the Literature of Botany in 1881 . published, which showed him to be an excellent expert on botanical and taxonomic literature. Jackson began work on the index in 1882, with the assistance of several assistants at times. The work Genera Plantarum by George Bentham and Joseph Dalton Hooker served him as the basis for the listing of the plant genera of the index. A single sheet of paper was created for each generic name. Then all were in Nomenclator Botanicus of Ernst Gottlieb von Steudel recorded species listed on the respective genus leaves. The Nomenclator copy from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew used by Jackson also contained numerous handwritten additions added later, as it had been constantly expanded using the institute's own herbarium.

All sheets of a genus were stowed in an envelope labeled with the genus name, which in turn was stored in boxes in alphabetical order, similar to a herbarium. It took Jackson 18 months for this preliminary work, in which he put in more than 30,000 envelopes, which were stored in 178 boxes and together weighed more than a ton. The first two volumes of the index were published in four sub-volumes between 1893 and 1895.

In a review of the first volume, the editor of the Journal of Botany, James Britten , who was quite critical of the index, praised Jackson's great achievement in creating the index:

"It had come to be supposed that only Germans were sufficiently persevering to face the drudgery which such an undertaking involves - a drudgery off which no one who has not been engaged in dictionary or index work can form an idea: but Mr. Jackson has shown that where plodding industry is need, England can hold her own. "

- James Britten : Journal of Botany. 1893, p. 312

“It was traditionally assumed that only Germans had the stamina to face the drudgery that such an undertaking entails - drudgery that no one who has never worked on a reference work or index can imagine may have: but Mr. Jackson has shown that England can keep up when tedious work is required. "

Together with Théophile Alexis Durand (1855-1912) Jackson also edited the first supplementary volume of the Index Kewensis, which was published between 1902 and 1906 in four volumes.

Honors

The genera Daydonia Britten from the tea bush family (Theaceae) and Jacksonago Kuntze from the legume family (Fabaceae) are named after Jackson .

Works

  • Guide to the Literature of Botany; Being a Classified Selection of Botanical Works, Including Nearly 6000 Titles Not Given in Pritzel's 'Thesaurus.' London 1881 (Published for the Index Society by Longmans, Green & co., 626 pages).
  • Vegetable technology . 1882.
  • A Glossary of Botanic Terms, with Their Derivation and Accent . 1st edition. Gerald Duckworth / JB Lippincott, London / Philadelphia 1900 (4th revised edition 1928, 481 pages; reprint 1950 London (Duckworth) and New York (Hafner), 481 pages).
  • Index Kewensis Plantarum Phanerogamarum - Nomina et synonyma omnium generum et specierum a Linnaeo usque as annum MDCCCLXXXV complectens nomine recepto auctore patria unicuique plantae subjectis. 1st and 2nd volume (1893–1895) and 1st supplement (1902–1906)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary / Benjamin Daydon Jackson, The Times, October 15, 1927
  2. ^ Frans A. Stafleu: Review: The Index Kewensis. In: Taxon. Volume 15, Number 7, September 1966, pp. 270-274 ( doi: 10.2307 / 1217066 ).
  3. ↑ George Bentham, Joseph Dalton Hooker: Genera plantarum ad exemplaria imprimis in herbariis Kewensibus servata definita. 1862–1883, 3 volumes
  4. ^ A b Benjamin Dayton Jackson: The new 'Index of Plant-Names'. In: The Botanical Journal - British and Foreign. Volume 25, West, Newman & Co., London 1887, pp. 66-71 (on- line ).
  5. ↑ James Britten: Notices of Books - Index Kewensis. In: Journal of Botany. The British and the Foreign . Volume 31, 1893, pp. 310-317.
  6. ^ Index Kewensis chronology. on the homepage of the International Plant Names Index (IPNI), accessed on April 6, 2016
  7. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names . Extended Edition. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, Free University Berlin Berlin 2018. [1]
personal data
SURNAME Jackson, Benjamin Daydon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English botanist, bibliographer and taxonomist
DATE OF BIRTH April 3, 1846
PLACE OF BIRTH Stockwell (London)
DATE OF DEATH October 12, 1927
Place of death London