Hooker, SIR WILLIAM JACKSON, a celebrated English botanist, was born at Norwich in 1785. Of independent means from an early age, he devoted himself to natural science. His first work was a Journal of a Tour in Ice'and in 1811, written from memory, his diaries and collections having been burned. It proved so popular that a second edition was called for in 1813. He married in 1815, and settled first at Halesworth in Suffolk, but was appointed by the crown to the chair of Botany at Glasgow University in 1820. In 1841 he was appointed director of the Royal Gardens at Kew, and his energy and enthusiasm extended it enormously. He was made K.H. in 1836. Already F.R.S. in 1810, he became later D.C.L. of Oxford, LL.D. of Glasgow, and an honorary member of most foreign scientific societies. He exercised much influence in botanical appointments and in naming naturalists to accompany exploring expeditions. His herbarium and his admirable library were given to Kew. He died August 12, 1865. His name survives in Mount Hooker in the Rocky Mountains, and in Hookeria, a natural order of mosses.
His British Jungermanniae (1816); his edition of Curtis's Flora Londinensis (1817-28); Muscologia Britannica (1818), in conjunction with Dr T. Taylor; and Musci Exotici (1818-20) were his chief early works. Later books were Exotic Flora (1822-27); the British Flora, with Dr Walker-Arnott (1830); Icones Filicum, with Dr Greville (1829-31); Icones Plantarum (1837-54); Species Filicum (1846-64); and Filices Exotice (1857-59). Yet he found time in his busy life to edit the Botanical Magazine (1827-65), the London Journal of Botany (1842-48), and the Journal of Botany and Kew Miscellany (1849-57).
SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER, son of the preceding, and also an eminent naturalist, was born at Halesworth in Suffolk, June 30, 1817. He was educated at the High School and university of Glasgow, and graduated as M.D. there in 1839. He next joined the antarctic expedition of the Erebus and Terror, returning after a four years' absence to superintend the publication of his magistral Flora Antarctica (1844-47), Flora Novæ Zelundiae (1853-55), and Flora Tasmaniae (1860). He acted for some time as substitute for Professor Graham in the chair of Botany at Edinburgh University, was appointed in 1846 botanist to the Geological Survey of Great Britain, and next year started on a botanical expedition to the Himalayas, which occupied him for three years. His Himalayan Journals (1854) contains the narrative of this expedition, and the Rhododendrons of the Sikkim-Himalaya (1849-51) illustrates the most remarkable additions which he made to the ornamental plants of our gardens on this occasion. With Dr Thomson of the Calcutta Botanic Gardens he undertook a Flora Indica (vol. i. 1855), still a splendid fragment. He published later a flora of British India (1874). In 1871 he made an expedition to Morocco, ascended the Great Atlas, the summit of which had never before been reached by a European, and brought back a valuable collection of plants. His Tour appeared in 1878. In 1877 he accompanied Dr Asa Gray in a scientific tour through Colorado, Utah, and California.
Dr Hooker was appointed assistant-director at Kew Gardens in 1855, and on the death of his father in 1865 he succeeded him as director. He succeeded him also in those liberal ideas which have made Kew the real centre of the botanical world. He was president of the British Association meeting at Norwich in 1868, and in his much-debated address professed himself entirely an adherent of Darwin. From 1873 to 1878 he was president of the Royal Society, was made C.B. in 1869 and K.C.S.L. in 1877. He is also LL.D. of Cambridge, Dublin, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, and D.C.L. of Oxford. One of his best-known works is his useful Students' Flora of the British Islands (1870); his most important, the Genera Plantarum, in conjunction with George Bentham (3 vols. 1862-83). See an article in Nature (vol. xvi.).