Edwin Percy Phillips

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Edwin Percy Phillips (born February 18, 1884 in Sea Point, Cape Town , † April 12, 1967 in Cape Town) was a South African botanist . Its official botanical author's abbreviation is " E.Phillips ".

Life

Phillips was the son of Ralph E. Phillips and Edith M. Crowder. From 1900 he studied at the South African College, where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts in 1905 and a Master of Arts in 1908. In 1915 he was awarded a Doctor of Degree with the dissertation A contribution to the flora of the Leribe Plateau and environ, with a discussion on the relationships of the flora of Basutoland, the Kalahari, and the south-eastern regions under the direction of Henry Harold Welch Pearson Science at the University of the Cape of Good Hope. For this purpose, he conducted field studies on the Leribe Plateau in 1913.

In 1907 Phillips became an assistant at the Herbarium of the South African Museum , where Pearson was honorary curator. In 1910 Phillips spent ten months in the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens (Kew) , where he wrote in collaboration with Otto Stapf and John Hutchinson about the silver tree family (Proteaceae) in the Flora Capensis work. In 1911, Phillips became curator of the South African Museum Herbarium after Pearson resigned from his post to become Curator of the Bolus Herbarium . In September 1911, Phillips took part in the Percy Sladen Memorial Expedition to Kamiesberg .

In 1918, Phillips became curator of botany in the Agriculture Department of the National Herbarium, which expanded rapidly with the introduction of botanical exploration of South Africa from 1913 under the direction of Illtyd Buller Pole-Evans .

In 1926, Phillips published two papers in the Memoirs of the Botanical Survey of South Africa series by Pole-Evans. The first was a preliminary list of the poisonous plants of South Africa (Memoirs 9: A preliminary list of the known poisonous plants found in South Africa ) and the second dealt with the genera of South African flowering plants (Memoirs 10: The genera of South African Flowering plants ), which came out in a revised edition in 1951. Between 1921 and 1943 Phillips wrote most of the texts for the first 20 volumes of the illustrated series The Flowering Plants of South Africa . When the National Herbarium's Journal Bothalia was founded in 1921 , Phillips contributed numerous articles to the first two issues of the journal.

Phillips published over 200 papers, including his major works An introduction to the study of South African grasses, with notes on their structure, distribution, cultivation, etc. in 1931 and The weeds of South Africa in 1938. More than 15 popular science articles appeared from 1922 in the Agricultural Journal and in various farm magazines. In 1966 he and Estelle van Hoepen edited the work The Common Names of South African Plants by Christo Albertyn Smith , who died in 1956.

In 1939, Phillips succeeded Pole-Evans as head of botany and plant pathology at the National Herbarium, a position he held until his retirement in 1944. During World War II, the herbarium suffered budget cuts and lost staff who joined the armed forces. Even so, Phillips continued to publish very productively.

Phillips was active in a number of scientific societies. He was a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London and in 1921 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa . As a member of the South African Biological Society , he was secretary from 1919 to 1944 and president in 1950. In 1925 he was awarded the Senior Captain Scott Memorial Medal.

In 1915 he became a member of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science , where he served on the board for many years. In 1930 and 1935 he was elected President of Section C (which includes botany). In 1942 he was President of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dedication names

The following species are named after Edwin Percy Phillips:

literature

  • Mary Gunn, LEW Codd: Botanical Exploration Southern Africa: An Illustrated History of Early Botanical Literature on the Cape Flora AA Balkema Publishers, 1981, ISBN 978-0-869-61129-6 , p. 280

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Phillips, Edwin Percy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African botanist
DATE OF BIRTH February 18, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Sea Point, Cape Town
DATE OF DEATH April 12, 1967
Place of death Cape Town