Born China 1924; died 1995
Although born in China, David Irvine returned to the Shetland Islands as a baby and was educated in Lerwick. He served in the RAF during the Second World War and in 1947 entered St Andrews University to read botany, staying on to take a PhD on the ecology of a single rock pool. During this period he became a founder member of the British Phycological (the scientific study of algae) Society. In 1954 he was appointed a Demonstrator in Agricultural Botany at the University of Cambridge where he stayed until 1958. He then spent 2 years as a research assistant at the University of Illinois contributing to the ‘Index Nominum Algarum’, an index of the published names of algae. In 1961 he returned to Britain as senior lecturer in the Department of Biology and Geology at the Polytechnic of North London where he stayed until his retirement in 1984. Although dedicating most of his academic life to the study of seaweeds in the north eastern Atlantic, David Irvine was an accomplished field biologist and natural historian with a wide range of interests. He led a number of field trips to study seaweeds and marine algae around Lundy Island, Sullom Voe and the Faroes. An avid collector, he bequeathed his herbarium and reprint collection to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.
Source: obituary, The Phycologist 1996 http://www.brphycsoc.org/documents/phycologist/The%20Phycologist%20No.%2044%20August%201996.pdf
David Wilkie was a leading authority on horticulture. He was interested in all living plants, but his chief interest lay in plants from mountainous regions of the world. His career started as a student gardener at RBGE in 1906 at the age of 14 - a time when plants new to European horticulture were being introduced to the U.K. from the Himalayan regions - he dedicated a large part of his life to the cultivation and study of these plants, becoming a recognised authority, gaining some of the highest awards in horticulture, including an R.H.S. Associateship of Honour in 1946. In 1933 he was part of the group responsible for the formation of the Scottish Rock Garden Club, of which he became President in 1959. He was also a member of the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society, holding the Presidentship in 1951. Wilkie's book on Gentians was published in 1936. L.P. from Wilkie's obituary in the Scotsman.