William T. Stearn

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

William Thomas Stearn (born April 16, 1911 in Cambridge , † May 9, 2001 in London ) was a British botanist . Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Stearn ".

Life

William Thomas Stearn is the eldest son of Thomas Stearn and his wife Nellie.

From 1922 to 1929 William T. Stearn attended the Cambridge and County School for Boys , where his interest in botany and zoology awoke.

Due to the poverty of his family after the death of his father, he began an apprenticeship as a bookseller in 1929, but continued to study botany in his spare time with the support of university patrons. He often visited the Cambridge Botanical Garden , on the basis of whose collection he prepared later revisions of the genera Vinca , Epimedium , Hosta and Symphytum and in 1930 described his first species, the Chinese Allium farreri . In 1931 he began work on a monograph on the genera Epimedium and Vancouveria , which was published in 1938 as Epimedium and Vancouveria (Berberidaceae), a monograph .

In 1933 he got a job at the Lindley Library of the Royal Horticultural Society . He made valuable contributions to the taxonomy of plants by researching the exact publication date of many inaccurately dated plant descriptions from the 19th century through intensive source study. Alone with the post-dating of 106 parts of the Histoire naturelle des Îles Canaries (1835-1850) by Philip Barker Webb and Sabin Berthelot , he dealt for three years.

In 1950 he wrote the work Lilies of the world together with Hubert Bayley Drysdale Woodcock . But the work that made him famous around the world was called Botanical Latin ; the first edition appeared in 1966, further, almost unchanged editions appeared in 1973, 1983 and 1992. He gave all foreign-language botanists the opportunity to better understand and write Latin, which is necessary for botanical descriptions. His knowledge of literature and the history of botany throughout the centuries was so extensive that he was asked to write an introduction to many reprints. He wrote the most important commentary on Carl von Linnés Species plantarum for the Reprint of the Ray Society, 1957. Other important works that he has written or edited include the International Code of Nomenclature for cultivated plants , 1952; also the work The art of botanical illustration ; written together with Wilfried Blunt , 1950 and 1994.

For decades he worked for the British Museum (Natural History) in London and studied plants from the Caribbean. For the Flora Europaea he wrote the text on the genus Allium with about 110 European species.

Honors

In 1964 William T. Stearn received the Veitch Memorial Medal of the Royal Horticultural Society and in 1976 he was awarded the Linnaeus Medal of the Linnean Society of London , of which he was President from 1979 to 1982. There are also numerous other honors, including the Asa Gray Award, which he received in 2000. In honor of Stearn, the species Justicia stearnii was named V.AWGraham .

Fonts

  • Botanical Latin, History, Grammar, Syntax, Terminology and Vocabulary . London, 1st ed. 1966, 2nd ed. 1973, 3rd ed. 1983, 4th ed. 1992.
  • An introduction to the 'Species Plantarum' and cognate botanical works of Carl Linnaeus . Reprint, Ray Society, 1957.
  • as ed. with Erminio Caprotti: Herbarium Apulei 1481, Erbolario volgare 1522. 2 volumes. Milan 1979 (= Libri rari. Collezione di ristampe con nuovi apparati. Volume 3).
  • Stearn's dictionary of plant names for gardeners . Cassell, 1992. First published in 1963 with AW Smith as A gardener's dictionary of plant names .
  • Allium . Flora Europaea 5: pp. 49-69, 1980.
  • with Wilfrid Blunt : The Art of Botanical Illustration , Collins, London, 1950; new edition, Antique Collectors' Club, 1994.

literature

  • Ghillean T. Prance: William Thomas Stearn (1911-2001) . In: Taxon . Volume 50, 2001, pp. 1255-1276.
  • Frans A. Stafleu, Richard S. Cowan: Taxonomic Literature . Volume 5, 1985, pp. 850-853.
  • Nicolas Barker: Obituary ( April 24, 2008 memento in the Internet Archive ) in The Independent
  • Publications by William T. Stearn on bibliographical, botanical and horticultural subjects, 1929-1976; a chronological list . In: Biological Journal of the Linnean Society . Volume 8, Number 4, 1976, pp. 299-318 ( doi: 10.1111 / j.1095-8312.1976.tb00252.x ).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ruth Temple: Society News . In: The Linnean . Volume 26, Number 3, October 2010, p. 3, [1] .
  2. ^ Hugh H. Iltis: William T. Stearn — Recipient of the 2000 Asa Gray Award . In: Systematic Botany . Volume 26, Number 1, 2001, pp. 1-4 ( doi: 10.1043 / 0363-6445-26.1.1 ).
  3. ↑ Walter Erhardt among others: The great pikeperch. Encyclopedia of Plant Names . Volume 2, page 2057. Verlag Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 2008. ISBN 978-3-8001-5406-7

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Stearn, William T.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stearn, William Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British botanist
DATE OF BIRTH April 16, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Cambridge
DATE OF DEATH May 9, 2001
Place of death London