HOOKER, SIR JOSEPH DALTON (1817-1911) was born at Halesworth, Suffolk. Educated in the Glasgow High School, he proceeded to the University (where his father was professor of botany), and studied moral philosophy and medicine, graduating M.D. in 1839.

Interested in botanical research, he received an offer from Sir James Clark Ross to accompany the Antarctic expedition and he sailed from Chatham as assistant surgeon in the Erebus on 29 Sep 1839. The voyage was broken at Tasmania, New Zealand and the Falkland Islands, and Hooker had ample opportunities of making collections. He spent some time at the Auckland and Campbell islands, where with Lyall he collected 370 specimens of plants. At Bay of Islands (early in 1841) he met Colenso and Dr Sinclair, who assisted him to make a thorough exploration of the vicinity. The botanical results of the expedition were published in six volumes by the British Government. The Flora Antarctica, Flora Novae Zelandiae and Flora Tasmaniae, which appeared between 1843 and 1860, embraced all the information on the subject which Hooker had collected from various sources. He had ample time to gather from correspondence with Colenso, Sinclair and others the results of their later observations.

In 1846 Hooker was appointed botanist to the geological survey of Great Britain. In 1847 he made a botanical and geographical survey of the Himalaya region, discovering many new plants (including 37 species of rhododendron). Hooker's researches had an important bearing on the theory of evolution. In the Pacific he found identical species in islands separated by 3,000 miles of ocean, and in the Galapagos he found related but different animals and plants in the different islands. In 1844 Darwin first confided to Hooker his theory of evolution by natural selection, and they corresponded continuously during the next 14 years before the theory was published. Darwin valued Hooker's opinion more than that of anyone else and believed he would live to see Hooker the first authority in Europe on geographical distribution. His introductory essay on the flora of Tasmania (1859) is remarkable as the first sketch of a rational theory of geographical distribution of plants. Hooker and Lyell some time earlier acted for Darwin, who was ill, in proving that his theory had been put forward 14 years before.

In 1860 Hooker took part in a naval scientific expedition to Syria and that year also he began (with Bentham) his Genera Plantarum. In 1865 he succeeded his father as director at Kew, where he had been engaged as botanist since 1855. His handbook of the New Zealand Flora which was commissioned by the New Zealand Government, appeared in 1867. In 1868 he was president of the British Association. In 1871 he went with John Ball and George Maw on an expedition to Morocco in which he proved that the Arctic-Alpine flora did not reach the Atlas mountains. Hooker in 1872 found himself in conflict with the Office of Works over the function of Kew Gardens, which the department thought should have the character of a pleasure garden. Gladstone sided with Hooker, and removed the offending commissioner.

In 1872 Hooker drew up suggestions for the collections to be made by the Challenger expedition, and in 1876, as president of the Royal Society, he welcomed back the expedition. He was chairman of the committee for publication of the reports, which appeared in 50 volumes during the period 1876-95. In retiring from the presidency of the Society in 1878, Hooker announced the raising of a sum of £10,000 as an endowment to enable the Society to reduce its fees, which had prevented many men of high eminence from joining. After some years of scientific work in America Hooker returned in 1879 to Antarctic botany, discussing the flora of Kerguelen Land as a result of the transit of Venus expedition (1874). His Genera Plantarum having been completed in 1883, he turned to his Indian botany, which he completed in seven volumes in 1897. Retiring from Kew in 1885, he edited in 1896 Sir Joseph Banks's journal of Cook's first voyage, and thereafter worked on the flora of Ceylon and the Imperial Gazetteer of India.

Hooker received honorary degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dublin. (C.B., 1869; K.C.S.I., 1877; G.C.S.I., 1897; Order of Merit, 1907.) He received the most prized medals of many learned societies, including a Royal medal (1854), from the Royal Society, the Copley medal (1887) and the Darwin medal (1892). In 1892 he was the sole recipient from the Royal Swedish Academy of the medal struck to commemorate the bicentenary of the birth of Linnaeus. His physical and mental powers remained unimpaired until his death, on 10 Dec 1911.

Leonard Huxley, Life and Letters of Sir J. D. Hooker; D.N.B.; Hooker, op. cit.; N.Z. Jour. of Science, May 1885.

Reference: Volume 1, page 223

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