William Jackson Hooker

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William Jackson Hooker
William Jackson Hooker, lithograph by Rudolf Hoffmann , 1858

Sir William Jackson Hooker (born July 6, 1785 in Norwich , † August 12, 1865 in Kew ) was a British botanist . Its official botanical author abbreviation is “ Hook. "

Hooker was Regius Professor of Botany at the University of Glasgow and first director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew . He was a close friend of Joseph Banks who supported him in his research. Through his work on flowering plants , ferns and mosses, Hooker is one of the most important systematic botanists of his time.

Live and act

William Jackson Hooker was born on Magdalen Street in Norwich to Joseph Hooker (1754-1845) of Exeter and his wife Lydia, née Vincent (1759-1829). Joseph Hooker was an accountant for the Baring family of cloth merchants in Norwich, trading worsted and bombasin . He belonged to the same family as the theologian Richard Hooker and devoted his free time to studying German literature and growing little-known plants. Among other things, he owned a collection of succulents . His son was taught at the Norwich Latin School between 1792 and 1802/1803. He then attended Starston Hall to learn estate management. His second uncle, the brewer William Jackson (1757–1789) had bequeathed his fortune to him; he was able to take over the inheritance in 1806 at the age of 21. Through this independent income Hooker could travel and natural history study, where he is especially on birds and entomology specialist. Finally, following a recommendation from James Edward Smith , he limited his interest to botany . In 1807/1808 he toured Scotland , the Hebrides and Orkney .

Hooker's first botanical expedition, at the suggestion of Joseph Banks , took him to Iceland in the summer of 1809 . However, on his way home, a fire destroyed all samples and descriptions he had collected, and he almost died in the process. Hooker was nevertheless able to compose an account of the island's residents and flora based on his good memory and notes from Banks, who visited the island in 1772. This was published in 1811 and 1813.

In 1814 he had to give up his trip to Ceylon with Sir Robert Brownrigg due to the Kandy Wars . Therefore, he spent nine months in France , Switzerland and northern Italy , doing botanical research and exploration. In 1815 he married Maria Dawson Turner, the eldest daughter of Dawson Turner , a botanist and banker.

After the family moved to Halesworth , Suffolk , he devoted himself to the creation of his herbarium , which soon became famous among botanists around the world. In 1816 his first scientific paper British Jungermanniae was published. This was followed by a new edition of William Curtis ' Flora Londinensis , for which he wrote descriptions. This included a complete description of all the mosses in Britain and Ireland , which he had compiled with Thomas Taylor .

In 1820 Hooker Regius became a professor at the University of Glasgow, where he soon became a popular lecturer due to his clear style. The following year he published Flora Scotica . Also worked with the Glaswegian botanist and lithographer Thomas Hopkirk on the establishment of the Royal Botanic Institution of Glasgow .

Hooker was successful in calling for the British government to call botanists on expeditions. In the course of his work, the herbarium also expanded and contained plants from all over the world. In 1836 he was knighted in Hanover and in 1841 director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew . Under his leadership, the area of ​​the gardens was increased from four to 30 hectares and received a separate tree garden of 1.1 km². Numerous greenhouses were also built and the museum of economic botany was opened.

His eldest son William Dawson Hooker (1816–1840), who had received his doctorate on the cinchona tree in Glasgow , died of yellow fever in Jamaica at the age of 23 . His second son, Joseph Dalton Hooker, was also an eminent botanist and later succeeded him as director of the Royal Botanic Gardens.

Honors

Crinodendron hookerianum : flowers and evergreen leaves

In 1812 he was elected as a member (" Fellow ") in the Royal Society . In 1815 he became a corresponding member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences , from 1833 he was a foreign member. In 1818 he was elected a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina . In 1823 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1834 he became a corresponding member and in 1855 an honorary member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences . From 1837 he was a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg . In 1845 he became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . In December 1856 he was made a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences and in 1859 a foreign member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and an honorary member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . In 1862 he was accepted into the American Philosophical Society .

The plant genera Hookeria from the moss family Hookeriaceae and Hookeriopsis (Besch.) A. Jaeger and × Hookerara are named after him, as is the tree Crinodendron hookerianum . Also the genus Williamia Baill. from the family of the milkweed family (Euphorbiaceae) honors William Jackson Hooker. In addition, Cape Hooker from Low Island in the archipelago of the South Shetland Islands in Antarctica bears his name.

Writings and works

Title page Botany of Beechey's Voyage to the Pacific and Behring's Straits (1841).
  • Account of Sabine's Arctic Plants (1824)
  • Catalog of Plants in the Glasgow Botanic Garden (1825)
  • Botany of Parry's Third Voyage (1826)
  • British Flora , with George Arnott Walker Arnott (1830)
  • Characters of Genera from the British Flora (1830)
  • Icones Filicum , with Robert Kaye Greville (2 volumes, 1829–1831)
  • British Flora Cryptogamia (1833)
  • Companion to the Botanical Magazine (2 volumes, 1835–1836)
  • Flora boreali-americana (2 volumes, 1829–1840), description of the plants collected on Sir John Franklin's journey
  • Botany of Beechey's Voyage to the Pacific and Behring's Straits , with George Arnott Walker Arnott (1841)
  • The Journal of Botany (4 volumes, 1830–1842)
  • Genera Fiticum (1842)
  • Notes on the Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of the Erebus and Terror (1843)
  • A Century of Orchideae (1846)
  • The London Journal of Botany (7 volumes, 1842–1848)
  • Niger Flora (1849)
  • Victoria Regia (1851)
  • Icones plantarum (10 volumes, 1837–1854)
  • A Century of Ferns (1854)
  • Museums of Economic Botany at Kew (1855)
  • Journal of Botany and Kew Garden Miscellany (9 volumes, 1849-1857)
  • Filices exoticae (1857-1859)
  • A Second Century of Ferns (1860–1861)
  • The British Ferns (1861-1862)
  • Species filicum (5 volumes, 1846–1864) is considered the standard work on this
  • The Botanical Magazine (38 volumes, 1827-1865)

literature

  • Mea Allan: The Hookers of Kew. 1785-1911 . Michael Joseph, London 1967.
  • Joseph Dalton Hooker: A Sketch of the Life and Labor of Sir William Jackson Hooker . In: Annals of Botany . Volume 16, 1902, pp. IX-CCXXI.
  • Sylvia FitzGerald, 'Hooker, Sir William Jackson (1785-1865)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009, accessed 4 Oct 2013

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The University of Glasgow Story Sir William Jackson Hooker ; from the University of Glasgow website, accessed January 21, 2015.
  2. ↑ Sir Jackson Hooker's membership entry at the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , accessed on November 27, 2015.
  3. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. William Jackson Hooker. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed August 22, 2015 .
  4. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed December 21, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 118.
  6. ↑ Member entry of Sir William Jackson Hooker (with picture) at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on February 3, 2016.
  7. ^ Member History: Sir William J. Hooker. American Philosophical Society, accessed October 3, 2018 .
  8. ↑ a b Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymic plant names . Extended Edition. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, Free University Berlin Berlin 2018. [1]

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Hooker, William Jackson
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British botanist
DATE OF BIRTH July 6, 1785
PLACE OF BIRTH Norwich , England
DATE OF DEATH August 12, 1865
Place of death Kew