Hooker, Sir William Jackson

Hooker, Sir William Jackson, 1785–1865, English botanist. A leading authority of his time on ferns, he formed a famous herbarium and built up the Glasgow Garden and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. At Kew he founded the first museum of economic botany. Among his many works are British Jungermanniae (1816), Flora Scotica (1821), British Flora (1830), and a number of works on ferns, including Genera Filicum (1838), Species Filicum (5 vol., 1846–64), and Synopsis Filicum (1868). He edited many botanical journals.

His son Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, 1817–1911, was also a botanist. After his first scientific expedition he wrote on the flora of New Zealand and Tasmania. Sir Joseph's great works include Antarctic Flora (1844–47), Genera Plantarum (with George Bentham, 3 vol., 1862–83), and The Flora of British India (7 vol., 1875–97). He edited the Index Kewensis (2 vol., 1895), by B. D. Jackson. He was a friend of Darwin and a defender of his theories.

See M. Allan, The Hookers of Kew, 1785–1911 (1967).

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