Identity area
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Title
Date(s)
- 1830 - 1868 (Creation)
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Collection
Extent and medium
1 folder
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Born Edinburgh 1799: died Glasgow 1868.
George Walker Arnott entered the University of Edinburgh aged 14 and took his MA degree in 1818, having already published learned articles on mathematics. He then studied law but abandoned it (due to a dislike of public speaking) in favour of botany, and in the early 1820s went to France to exchange views and excursions with the great French botanists, for a time working in the Paris herbaria. He became famous for his work on cryptogams. He was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1825 and in 1828 the genus Arnottia was named after him. Between 1830 and 1840 Arnott worked with Sir William Jackson Hooker building a reputation as a meticulous taxonomist. His descriptions of new plants from South America, India and Senegambia were published in various journals and he co-operated with Robert Wight in his Illustrations of Indian Botany. In 1837 the University of Aberdeen awarded him its LLD and in 1845 he was elected Regius Professor of Botany at Glasgow University. In 1850 he collaborated with Hooker on the sixth edition of 'British Flora'. At that time he studied and built up a collection of diatoms. Although ‘disinclined’ to publish, his obituary in the Journal of Botany notes that ‘his marvellous letters … to his numerous working correspondents’ made his scientific observations equally useful. He was also an enthusiastic curler and freemason.
Sources: DNB; Desmond's Dictionary; Jnl Bot 1868; Gard Chron 1868
by D.W.
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GB 235 GWA/1/1-2 - 'Manuscripts of some of Professor Walker Arnott's lectures, chiefly on roots and an 'Interesting historical account of the potato'', 19th century.
1st manuscript, 23 pages, covers the history of the potato and its cultivation and commercial uses, marketing and preparation for consumption. Refers to the first cultivation of the plant in Scotland in Kilsyth in 1728, and then Forfar in 1730.
2nd manuscript, 17 pages, is a continuation of the first and is devoted to many other root vegetables ranging from onions to cassava, heath pea and ginseng etc.
GB 235 GWA/2 - manuscript, 55 pages, covering the history of gardens with reference to botanic and research gardens, including a potential plan of the Royal Botanic Society of London, 19th century.
GB 235 GWA/3 - Letter from G.A. Walker Arnott to John Forbes Royale regarding the identification of plant species, written on 5th June 1837 from Arlary by Kinross. Letter refers to expectations of producing a book with Prof. Nees v Esenbeck in Germany on Himalayan plants. There is a typed transcript of this letter.
GB 235 GWA/4 - Copy of a letter from I. Bayley to Principal Barclay regarding G.A. Walker Arnott's estate/botanical collection post death, written on the 5th November 1868 alongside a copy of a letter from Bayley's son George(?) Bayley to Isaac Bayley Barclay at Glasgow University, 15 December 1880, confirming what happened to Walker Arnott's botanical collection and mahogany cabinet in 1869. Originals filed in Bayley Balfour's correspondence under G Bayley.
GB 235 GWA/5 - Copy of the biographical obituary notice of the late Dr. G.A. Walker Arnott (1868) by Dr. Hugh Cleghorn for the Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh.
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Collection is open to researchers by appointment, see (right click, open link in new tab:) https://www.rbge.org.uk/science-and-conservation/library-and-archives/visiting-the-library/
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Permission required from RBGE
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- English
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