Sir William Jackson HookerBorn 6 Jul 1785; died 12 Aug 1865 at age 80.English botanist who was the first director (1841) of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, near London. In 1804, at age 19, he discovered a new moss and became a botanical book illustrator for Dawson Turner. In 1809, Sir Joseph Banks recruited Hooker for a mission to Iceland, though he lost his specimens, and almost his life, when the ship caught fire on the return voyage. After other expeditions, he beame a popular lecturer (1820) at Glasgow University where he established the Royal Botanical Institution of Glasgow. He was knighted in 1836. As director at Kew, from 1841, he expanded it from 11 to 300 acres, amassed specimens from the British Empire, added the Palm House (1848) and established Kew as a national botanic garden given to the nation. He was the father of Joseph Dalton Hooker.« |
