charles_darwin

98
Biographies
Gray also wrote several textbooks on botany that became the standard
reference works in this field, including The Botanical Textbook:
for Schools, Colleges, and Private Students (1845) and The Elements of
Botany for Beginners and for Schools (1887).
The significance of Gray’s work was recognized in the United
States and Europe. He was the Fisher Professor of Natural History at
Harvard University between 1842 and 1888 (where he established
the Gray Herbarium in 1864). He was president of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences between 1863 and 1873 and president
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in
1872. He was also an honorary member of the Linnean and Royal
Societies as well as the academies of science of Paris, Berlin, and
Stockholm.
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (30 June 1817–
10 December 1911)
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker was one of Darwin’s closest friends.
Darwin asked Hooker to comment on his work more than any other
person; only Charles Lyell and Thomas Huxley were as close. But
Hooker was an important scientist notwithstanding his connection to
Darwin. Through his writing and his position as assistant director
and director of the botanical gardens at Kew, London (1855–1885),
he helped to establish botany as an academic discipline in Britain.
(Kew Gardens was and still is one of the largest botanical gardens in
Britain.)
Like Darwin, Hooker made a name for himself by participating
in a voyage in which scientific research was a major task. Hooker
sailed on HMS Erebus between 1839 and 1843. Unlike Darwin, however,
he was not independently wealthy and took the position of assistant
surgeon to pay his fare. The six-volume book The Botany of
the Antarctic Voyage of H.M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror, in the
Years 1839–1843, Under the Command of Captain Sir James Clark
Ross, K.t., R.N., F.R.S. & L.S., etc., published between 1844 and 1860,
sealed his reputation as a significant scientist. Hooker’s main research
in botany was on the geographical distribution of plants. He was
interested in describing all the flora in a particular area and working
out the relationship between these flora and others at similar latitude
or longitude. Flora Indica: Being a Systematic Account of the Plants of
British India, Together with Observations on the Structure and Affinities
of Their Natural Orders and Genera (1855) coauthored with Thomas
Thomson (1817–1878) and Handbook of the New Zealand Flora: A