Hooker, William Jackson (1785 - 1865)

Summary

William Hooker was the first director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew from 1841 to 1865. He assembled an herbarium of specimens from all parts of the world, and made Kew a focus for the collection of botanical specimens from Australia. His son Joseph Dalton Hooker also became a prominent botanist, succeeding William as Director of the Gardens upon his death in 1865. Between them they classified over 200 species of Tasmanian plants.

Details

Chronology

1841 - 1865

Career position - Director, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, England

1842

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus macrocarpa Hook.

1843

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus splachnicarpa Hook. (= Corymbia calophylla (Lindl.) K.D.Hill & L.A.S.Johnson (1995))

1844

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus spathulata Hook.

1844

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus maculata Hook. (= Corymbia maculata (Hook.) K.D.Hill & L.A.S.Johnson (1995))

1848

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus citriodora Hook.

1848

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus bicolor A.Cunn. ex Hook. (= E. largiflorens F. Muell. (1855))

1852

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus platypus Hook.

1934

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus camaldulensis Dehnh. var. acuminata (Hook.) Blakely

Related entries

Archival resources

Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales

• Linnean Society of London - Records, 1792 - 1870, FM 4/2699; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details

National Herbarium, Melbourne

• William Jackson Hooker - Records, 1854 - 1863, MSS M2; National Herbarium, Melbourne. Details

National Library of Australia Manuscript Collection

• John MacGillivray - Records, 1844 - 1855, mfm G 1881; National Library of Australia Manuscript Collection. Details

Published resources

Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation Exhibitions

• McCarthy, Gavan; Smith, Ailie; Moje, Christine; Rigby, Rebecca, The Study of Australian Eucalypts, eScholarship Research Centre, 2013, http://www.eoas.info/eucalypts/index.html. Details

Books

• Galloway, David J., A Man Tenax Propositi: Transcriptions of Letters from Charles Knight to William Jackson Hooker and Joseph Dalton Hooker Between 1852 and 1883 ([Wellington]: Geoscience Society of New Zealand, 2013), 88 pp. Details

Journal Articles

• Cohn, Helen M., 'Ferdinand Mueller, Government Botanist: the role of William Hooker in his appointment', Muelleria, 7 (1989), 99-102. Details
• Hooker, W. J., 'Mr Swainson's botanical report, principally relating to the eucalypti and casuarinae of Victoria, New Holland', Hooker’s journal of botany and Kew Garden miscellany, 6 (1854), 186-90. Details

Resources

• Wikidata, http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q472639. Details
• VIAF - Virtual International Authority File, OCLC, https://viaf.org/viaf/46874997. Details
• Home, R. W.; Lucas, A.M.; Maroske, Sara, Sinkora, D.M.; Voigt, J.H.; and Wells, M. [eds], The correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, 2023, https://vmcp.rbg.vic.gov.au/search/?correspondent=William%20Hooker. Details
• 'Hooker, William Jackson (1785-1865)', Trove, National Library of Australia, 2009, https://nla.gov.au/nla.party-864237. Details

See also

• Hall, Norman, Botanists of the Eucalypts: short biographies of people who have named eucalypts, whose names have been given to species or who have collected type material (Melbourne: CSIRO, 1978), 101 pp. Details
• Henderson, M. Helen; and Henderson, William G., The greater prize than gold: Augustus Oldfield, nineteenth century botanical collector and ethnographer (Perth, W.A.: The Book Reality Experience, 2018), 520 pp. Details