Francis Darwin

Francis Darwin

Sir Francis Darwin , also Frank Darwin (born August 16, 1848 in Downe , Kent , † September 19, 1925 in Cambridge ) was a British botanist . He was the seventh child (third son) of Charles Darwin .

Live and act

Darwin attended Trinity College (Cambridge) and studied mathematics first , then science ; he graduated in 1870. He then studied medicine at St. George's Medical School in London , where he earned the title of Bachelor of Medicine in 1875 ; but he did not practice as a doctor. In 1887 Francis Darwin published the autobiography of his father, who died in 1882 ("The Autobiography of Charles Darwin") and put together two books from his correspondence: "The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin" (1887) and "More Letters of Charles Darwin" ( 1905). He was also the editor of Thomas Huxley's "On the Reception of the Origin of Species" (1887). In 1888 he became professor of botany at Cambridge.

Scientific work

The main subjects of his work came from the field of plant physiology and concerned, among other things, the stomata, the ants attracting glands, the growth of plant sections and the lush growth of carnivorous plants when fed with meat (he published the 2nd edition of Charles Darwin's work “ Insectivorous Plants “ Out).

Francis Darwin worked 1874-82 with his father on experiments to study movement in plants , especially phototropism , and they jointly published The Power of Movement in Plants (1880). The fact that the cotyledons of a young grass sprout grow in the direction of the light was shown by experiments in which they compared the reactions of grass sprouts with covered and uncovered coleoptiles . These observations later led to the discovery of the auxins .

family

Darwin was married three times and widowed twice.

In 1874 he married Amy Ruck, but she died in 1876, four days after the birth of their son Bernard Darwin , who became a journalist and wrote several books on golf .

Darwin's second marriage was Ellen Crofts and they had a daughter, Frances Darwin (1886-1960), a poet who later married the classical philologist Francis Macdonald Cornford and who became known as a poet by her real name, Frances Crofts Cornford. Ellen died in 1903.

Darwin's third wife was Florence Henrietta Fisher, daughter of Herbert William Fisher and widow of Frederic William Maitland, whom he married in 1913, the year he was promoted to the rank of Knights Bachelor . Her sister Adeline Fisher was the first wife of Darwin's second cousin, composer Ralph Vaughan Williams .

Honors

On June 8, 1882 he was elected as a member (" Fellow ") in the Royal Society , which in 1912 awarded him the Darwin Medal named after his father . He was also a member of the Linnean Society of London and the Zoological Society of London . In 1913 he was knighted. In 1909 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina and the American Philosophical Society . Since 1908 he was also a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg . In 1916 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

literature

• Meyers Konversations-Lexikon . 5th edition, p. 617, Leipzig and Vienna 1895.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Tim M. Berra (2013) Darwin and His Children: His Other Legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. xii + 248 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-930944-3
2. ^ Member History: Francis Darwin. American Philosophical Society, accessed July 6, 2018 . 
3. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Francis Darwin. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed August 24, 2015 . 
4. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed October 20, 2019 . 

swell

• Entry to Darwin; Sir; Francis (1848-1925) in the Archives of the Royal Society , London