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
Born Surrey 1882; died Westmoreland 1966
Cicely Nichols, the daughter of a Surrey printer, married William Crewdson a barrister and later High Sherriff in 1907. In 1911 they moved to Westmoreland eventually having three daughters. In 1914 William Crewdson went to war, serving in Burma where Cicely joined him in 1915. She returned home in 1916, William in 1919. After the war Cicely’s interests turned more and more to flowering plants, particularly alpines, which she grew in her garden at Helme Lodge, Kendal. In 1931 she had an article published in <i>‘Popular Gardening’</i> and thereafter produced a series of articles in various Alpine Garden Society magazines, including the <i>Journal of The Scottish Rock Garden Club</i>. Her expertise developed through a lifetime correspondence with alpine specialists and she brought back seeds from her travels in Europe. Primulas were a particular speciality but she is best known for her hybrid blue poppy <i>Meconopsis crewdson</i>.
Source: 'Recollections of Cicely Maud Crewdson', unpublished family memoir in RBGE Library.
D.W.