https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbm.1947.0009
English botanist and writer. Specialised in the growth and cultivation of orchids. Later in his life he studied ferns.
Studied at University of Cambridge, studies were interrupted by WWI. He volunteered in France with the Friends' Ambulance Service. Returned to his studies at Cambridge in 1920 received a degree in Natural Sciences Tripos.
From 1920-1922 he worked at Cambridge University as a junior demonstrator. In 1922, he was appointed by the Colonial Office as assistant director at the Singapore Botanical Gardens. Promoted to Director in 1925, a role he would keep for the next 20 years.
During WWII, Japan occupied Singapore. Holttum was placed under house arrest while he continued to work at the Garden but he was relieved of his administrative duties. During this time he was able to concentrate on research. He wrote a number of drafts for books that would be published after the war. These include: "Gardening in the Lowlands of Malay" and the first two volumes of "A Revised Flora of Malaya."
Founding member and president of the Singapore Gardening Society. Was also a founding member of the Malayan Orchid Society.
In 1949, he left the Botanic Garden and became the first Chair of Botany at the University of Malaya until his retirement in 1954.
After retirement Holttum returned to England and began spending time at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Here he continued his research and contributed to the Pteridophyta in the Flora Malesiana project.
Holttum penned about 500 scientific texts, largely on ferns and orchids, but also dealing with bamboos, gingers and the Marantaceae family. Many plant taxa are named in his honour, including the fern genus Holttumiella Copel.
Born Suffolk 1817, died Berkshire 1911
Joseph Hooker graduated MD from Glasgow University though a passion for botany had developed through attending his father’s (William Jackson Hooker) lectures from the age of 7. Inspired by Darwin’s voyage of the Beagle, he was appointed assistant surgeon and then expedition’s botanist aboard the HMS Erebus in 1839 which spent 4 years exploring the southern oceans. Returning to England he worked on ‘The Botany of the Antarctic Voyages ‘plates, the book eventually being published in 6 volumes in the 1840s and 1850s. He was asked by Darwin to assist in classifying plants Darwin had gathered in the Galapagos; this was the start of a lifelong correspondence and friendship. Hooker acted as a sounding board and later research collaborator for Darwin’s emerging thinking on natural selection. Hooker’s central interest was in the geographical distribution of plants and how species migrated. This had practical applications in the search for new plants and transplanting crops between British colonies for economic exploitation. In 1845 he failed to be appointed professor of botany at Edinburgh University but the following year was appointed botanist to the Geological Survey which led to valuable series of papers. Between 1847 and 1851 Hooker travelled to Sikkim, India and Nepal, collecting 7,000 species including 25 new rhododendrons. In 1855 was appointed assistant director at Kew, under his father William Hooker. He succeeded his father as Director in 1865, by which time he was a highly regarded botanist with an international reputation. He remained Director at Kew until his retirement in 1885. These 20 years saw the expansion of Kew’s imperial role e.g. in facilitating the transfer of cinchona from South America to India and rubber from Brazil to several British colonies. Hooker strove to maintain Kew’s scientific reputation by limiting public access and resisting proposals to transfer Kew’s herbaria to the Natural History Museum. A prolific author, he was elected president of the Royal Society in 1873 and was highly regarded in his lifetime, receiving numerous honours, honorary degrees and prizes.
Sources: Dictionary of National Biography; R. Desmond ‘Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturalists; Journal of Botany 1912
D.W.
Professor of Botany at Glasgow University and Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.