Joseph Dalton Hooker

Biography

Early years

Hooker was born in Halesworth, Suffolk, England. He was the second son of Maria Sarah Turner, eldest daughter of the banker Dawson Turner and sister-in-law of Francis Palgrave, and the famous botanist Sir William Jackson Hooker, Regius Professor of Botany. From the age of seven, Hooker attended his father's lectures at the University of Glasgow, taking an early interest in plant distribution and the voyages of explorers like Captain James Cook. He was educated at the Glasgow High School and went on to study medicine at the University of Glasgow graduating with an MD in 1839.

His degree qualified him for employment in the Naval Medical Service. He joined the polar explorer Captain James Clark Ross's Antarctic expedition to the South Magnetic Pole after receiving a commission as Assistant-Surgeon on HMS Erebus. On this expedition, Hooker was granted full access to the private library of Richard Clement Moody, then Governor of the Falkland Islands. Hooker described the library as 'excellent', and developed a close friendship with Moody.

Marriages and children

In 1851, he married Frances Harriet Henslow (1825–1874), daughter of Darwin's mentor, John Stevens Henslow. They had three daughters and four sons:

William Henslow Hooker (1853–1942)

Harriet Anne Hooker (1854–1945) married William Turner Thiselton-Dyer

Charles Paget Hooker (1855–1933)

Maria Elizabeth Hooker (1857–1863) died aged 6.

Brian Harvey Hodgson Hooker (1860–1932)

Reginald Hawthorn Hooker (1867–1944) statistician

Grace Ellen Hooker (1868–1955)

Frances Harriet Henslow's contribution to his work included translating French botanical texts which Hooker edited.

After his first wife's death in 1874, in 1876 he married Lady Hyacinth Jardine (1842–1921), daughter of William Samuel Symonds and the widow of Sir William Jardine. They had two sons:

Joseph Symonds Hooker (1877–1940)

Richard Symonds Hooker (1885–1950).

Lady Hooker was elected a Fellow of the RSPB in 1905.

Sons Willy and Brian

Hooker regularly corresponded with the chief government scientist in New Zealand, Sir James Hector. He sent his son Willy (aged 15) to stay in New Zealand with the recently married Hector in 1869, Willy was sickly and coughing up blood, and a warmer climate was recommended. Though well-behaved he was indolent. Hector sent him on a cruise on a Government steamer the Sturt with a son (also 15) of Colonel Haultain the Defence minister. Mrs Hector treated him like a younger brother. After eight months and in better health Hector sent him home to England, saying he had greatly improved. His father was grateful, and surprised when Willy passed the civil service examination. He got an administrative job in the India Office, and lived to age 89.

However, his third son, Brian, was a "great worry" to him. He qualified as a geologist and mining engineer at the Royal School of Mines but unable to get a job in Britain emigrated to Australia, where he married. He resigned a Queensland lectureship to invest (with his brother Willy) in an impressively named but cash-strapped gold-mining company which collapsed, the Queensland Minerals Exploration Company. Joseph was appalled; Brian could not support his wife and children or find employment.

In 1891, Hector sent a pessimistic report on a proposed tin mine on Stewart Island, and saw Brian in 1892 and 1893, after he left his family in Australia. Hector ceased to be involved with mining in New Zealand under the new Liberal government. Brian returned to his family in Australia in 1894.

Death and burial

On 10 December 1911, after a short and apparently minor illness, Hooker died in his sleep at home, the Camp, Sunningdale, Berkshire. The Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey offered a grave near Darwin's in the nave but insisted that Hooker be cremated before.

His widow, Hyacinth, declined the proposal and eventually Hooker's body was buried, as he wished to be, alongside his father in the churchyard of St Anne's Church, Kew, a short distance from Kew Gardens. His memorial tablet in the church, with a motif of five plants, was designed by Matilda Smith.

Work

Voyage to the Antarctic 1839–1843

Hooker's first expedition, led by James Clark Ross, consisted of two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror; it was the last major voyage of exploration made entirely under sail. Hooker was the youngest of the 128-man crew. He sailed on the Erebus and was assistant to Robert McCormick, who in addition to being the ship's Surgeon was instructed to collect zoological and geological specimens. The ships sailed on 30 September 1839. Before journeying to Antarctica they visited Madeira, Tenerife, Santiago and Quail Island in the Cape Verde archipelago, St Paul Rocks, Trindade east of Brazil, St Helena, and the Cape of Good Hope. Hooker made plant collections at each location and while travelling drew these and specimens of algae and sea life pulled aboard using tow nets.

From the Cape they entered the Southern Ocean. Their first stop was the Crozet Islands where they set down on Possession Island to deliver coffee to sealers. They departed for the Kerguelen Islands where they would spend several days. Hooker identified 18 flowering plants, 35 mosses and liverworts, 25 lichens and 51 algae, including some that were not described by surgeon William Anderson when James Cook had visited the islands in 1772. The expedition spent some time in Hobart, Van Diemen's Land, and then moved on to the Auckland Islands and Campbell Island, and onward to Antarctica to locate the South Magnetic Pole. After spending 5 months in the Antarctic they returned to resupply in Hobart, then went on to Sydney, and the Bay of Islands in New Zealand from 18 August to 23 November 1841. They left New Zealand to return to Antarctica. After spending 138 days at sea, and a collision between the Erebus and Terror, they sailed to the Falkland Islands, to Tierra del Fuego, back to the Falklands and onward to their third sortie into the Antarctic. When Hooker arrived on the Falkland Islands with the expedition of Ross, he developed a close friendship with Richard Clement Moody, the Governor of the Falkland Islands. Moody granted Hooker full use of his personal library, which Hooker described as 'excellent', and Hooker described Moody as 'a very active and intelligent young man, most anxious to improve the colony and gain every information [sic] respecting its products'.

Subsequently, the Ross expedition made a landing at Cockburn Island off the Antarctic Peninsula, and after leaving the Antarctic, stopped at the Cape, St Helena and Ascension Island. The ships arrived back in England on 4 September 1843; the voyage had been a success for Ross as it was the first to confirm the existence of the southern continent and chart much of its coastline.

Geological Survey of Great Britain

In 1845, Hooker applied for the Chair of Botany at the University of Edinburgh. This position included duties at the Royal Botanic Gardens of Scotland, and so the appointment was influenced by local politicians. An unusually protracted struggle ensued, resulting in the election of the locally born and bred botanist, John Hutton Balfour. The Darwin correspondence, now public, makes clear Darwin's sense of shock at this unexpected outcome. Hooker declined a chair at Glasgow University which became vacant on Balfour's appointment. Instead, he took a position as botanist to the Geological Survey of Great Britain in 1846. He began work on palaeobotany, searching for fossil plants in the coal-beds of Wales, eventually discovering the first coal ball in 1855. He became engaged to Frances Henslow, daughter of Charles Darwin's botany tutor John Stevens Henslow, but he was keen to continue to travel and gain more experience in the field. He wanted to travel to India and the Himalayas. In 1847 his father nominated him to travel to India and collect plants for Kew. In 2011, a collection of glass plate slides of paleontological fossils, some prepared by Darwin, William Nicol and others, which had been lost following Hooker's brief tenure with the Survey, were rediscovered in the Survey vaults in Keyworth in Nottinghamshire, and they shed light on the international breadth of English scientific research in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Voyage to the Himalayas and India 1847–1851

On 11 November 1847 Hooker left England for his three-year-long Himalayan expedition. This was just 10 days after being granted two and a half years' leave from the Geological Survey to study fossil plants in India and Borneo on behalf of Kew and the Admiralty. He would be the first European to collect plants in the Himalaya, but abandoned the projected visit to Labuan. He received free passage on HMS Sidon, to the Nile and then travelled overland to Suez where he boarded a ship to India. He arrived in Calcutta on 12 January 1848, leaving on 28th to begin his travels with a geological survey party under 'Mr Williams', who he left on 3 March to continue travelling by elephant to Mirzapur, up the Ganges by boat to Siliguri and overland by pony to Darjeeling, arriving on 16 April 1848.

Hooker's expedition was based in Darjeeling where he stayed with naturalist Brian Houghton Hodgson. Through Hodgson he met British East India Company representative Archibald Campbell who negotiated Hooker's admission to Sikkim, which was finally approved in 1849 (He was later briefly taken prisoner by the Raja of Sikkim). Meanwhile, Hooker wrote to Darwin relaying to him the habits of animals in India, and collected plants in Bengal. He explored with local resident Charles Barnes, then travelled along the Great Runjeet river to its junction with the Teesta River and Tonglu mountain in the Singalila range on the border with Nepal.

Hooker and a sizeable party of local assistants departed for eastern Nepal on 27 October 1848. They travelled to Zongri, west over the spurs of Kangchenjunga, and north west along Nepal's passes into Tibet. In April 1849 he planned a longer expedition into Sikkim. Leaving on 3 May, he travelled north west up the Lachen Valley to the Kongra Lama Pass and then to the Lachoong Pass. Campbell and Hooker were imprisoned by the Dewan of Sikkim as they travelled towards the Cho La in Tibet. A British team was sent to negotiate with the king of Sikkim. However, they were released without any bloodshed and Hooker returned to Darjeeling, where he spent January and February 1850 writing his journals, replacing specimens lost during his detention and planning a journey for his last year in India. According to an 1887 journal written by Indian administrator Richard Temple, many of the rhododendrons found in English gardens of the time were grown from seeds collected by Hooker in Sikkim.

Reluctant to return to Sikkim, and unenthusiastic about travelling in Bhutan, he chose to make his last Himalayan expedition to Sylhet and the Khasi Hills in Assam. He was accompanied by Thomas Thomson, a fellow student from Glasgow University. They left Darjeeling on 1 May 1850, then sailed to the Bay of Bengal and travelled overland by elephant to the Khasi Hills and established a headquarters for their studies in Churra, where they stayed until 9 December, when they began their trip back to England. With Thomson he distributed the exsiccata-like series Herbarium Indiae orientalis.

Voyage to Palestine 1860

This trip was taken in the autumn of 1860, with Daniel Hanbury. They visited and collected in Syria and Palestine; no full-length report was published, but a number of papers were written. Hooker recognised three phytogeographical divisions: Western Syria and Palestine; Eastern Syria and Palestine; Middle and Upper mountain regions of Syria.

Voyage to Morocco 1871

Hooker visited Morocco from April to June 1871, in the company of John Ball, George Maw and a young gardener from Kew, called Crump. They published an account of their travels entitled Journal of a Tour in Marocco and The Great Atlas (1878).

Voyage to Western United States 1877

This was undertaken with his friend Asa Gray, the leading American botanist of the day. They wished to investigate the connection between the floras of eastern United States and those of eastern continental Asia and Japan; and the line of demarcation between Arctic floras of America and Greenland. As probable causes they considered the Glacial periods and an earlier land connection with an Arctic continent. "A difficult question was why in the great mountain chains of the Western United States there appeared to be only a few botanical enclaves of plants of eastern-Asiatic afinities among plants of Mexican and more southern types."

Hooker visited a number of cities and botanical institutions before moving west and climbing to 9,000 ft to camp at La Veta. From Fort Garland they climbed the Sierra Blanca at 14,500 ft. After returning to La Veta, they went beyond Colorado Springs to Pike's Peak. Next to Denver and Salt Lake City for an excursion into the Wasatch Range. A journey of 29 hours took them to Reno and Carson City, then Silver City and ten days by wagon across the Sierra Nevada. Thus they came to the Yosemite and Calaveras Grove, and ended up in San Francisco. Hooker was back in Kew with 1,000 dried specimens by October.

His comments on his encounters include the following:

After meeting and talking to Brigham Young, whom he described as respectable and well-spoken: "All the school children are brought up to believe in him [Brigham Young], and in a lot of scripture history as useless and idle as that taught in our schools."

Of Georgetown: the "finger-tip of civilisation" where "the people sleep without locks to their doors, the fire-engines are well-manned and in capital order, and there is no end of food".

"The New Englanders are most like us in language, speech and habits... The Americans are great and promiscuous eaters... beds are remarkably clean and good, but the pillows are too soft."

His views on the flora of Colorado and Utah: There are two temperate, and two cold or mountain floras, viz: 1. a prairie flora derived from the eastward; 2. a so-called desert and saline flora derived from the west; 3. a sub-alpine; 4. an alpine flora, the two latter of widely different origin, and in one sense proper to the Rocky Mountain ranges.

Darwin and evolution

While on the Erebus, Hooker had read proofs of Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle provided by Charles Lyell and had been very impressed by Darwin's skill as a naturalist. They had met once, before the Antarctic voyage embarked. After Hooker's return to England, he was approached by Darwin who invited him to classify the plants that Darwin had collected in South America and the Galápagos Islands. Hooker agreed and the pair began a lifelong friendship. On 11 January 1844 Darwin mentioned to Hooker his early ideas on the transmutation of species and natural selection, and Hooker showed interest. In 1847 he agreed to read Darwin's "Essay" explaining the theory, and responded with notes giving Darwin calm critical feedback. Their correspondence continued throughout the development of Darwin's theory and in 1858 Darwin wrote that Hooker was "the one living soul from whom I have constantly received sympathy".

Freeman 1978 wrote "Hooker was Charles Darwin's greatest friend and confidant". Certainly they had extensive correspondence, and they also met face-to-face (Hooker visiting Darwin). Hooker and Lyell were the two people Darwin consulted (by letter) when Alfred Russel Wallace's famous letter arrived at Down House, enclosing his paper on natural selection. Hooker was instrumental in creating the device whereby the Wallace paper was accompanied by Darwin's notes and his letter to Asa Gray (showing his prior realisation of natural selection) in a presentation to the Linnean Society. Hooker was the one who formally presented this material to the Linnean Society meeting in 1858. In 1859 the author of The Origin of Species recorded his indebtedness to Hooker's wide knowledge and balanced judgment.

In December 1859, Hooker published the Introductory Essay to the Flora Tasmaniae, the final part of the Botany of the Antarctic Voyage. It was in this essay (which appeared just one month after the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species), that Hooker announced his support for the theory of evolution by natural selection, thus becoming the first recognised man of science to publicly back Darwin.

At the historic debate on evolution held at the Oxford University Museum on 30 June 1860, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, Benjamin Brodie and Robert FitzRoy spoke against Darwin's theory, and Hooker and Thomas Henry Huxley defended it. According to Hooker's own account, it was he and not Huxley who delivered the most effective reply to Wilberforce's arguments.

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

By his travels and his publications, Hooker built up a high scientific reputation at home. In 1855 he was appointed Assistant-Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and in 1865 he succeeded his father as full Director, holding the post for twenty years. Under the directorship of father and son Hooker, the Royal Botanic gardens of Kew rose to world renown. At the age of thirty, Hooker was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1873 he was chosen its president (till 1877). He received three of its medals: the Royal Medal in 1854, the Copley in 1887 and the Darwin Medal in 1892. He continued to intersperse work at Kew with foreign exploration and collecting. His journeys to Palestine, Morocco and the United States all produced valuable information and specimens for Kew.

He started the series Flora Indica in 1855, together with Thomas Thompson. Their botanical observations and the publication of the Rhododendrons of Sikkim–Himalaya (1849–51), formed the basis of elaborate works on the rhododendrons of the Sikkim Himalaya and on the flora of India. His works were illustrated with lithographs by Walter Hood Fitch.

His greatest botanical work was the Flora of British India, published in seven volumes starting in 1872. On the publication of the last part in 1897, he was promoted Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Star of India (being made a Knight Commander of that Order in 1877). Ten years later, on attaining the age of ninety in 1907, he was awarded the Order of Merit.

He was the author of numerous scientific papers and monographs, and his larger books included, in addition to those already mentioned, a standard Students Flora of the British Isles and a monumental work, the Genera plantarum (1860–83), based on the collections at Kew, in which he had the assistance of George Bentham. His collaboration with George Bentham was especially important. Bentham, an amateur botanist who worked at Kew for many years, was perhaps the leading botanical systematist of the 19th century. The Handbook of the British flora, begun by Bentham and completed by Hooker, was the standard text for a hundred years. It was always known as 'Bentham & Hooker'.

In 1904, at the age of 87, Hooker published A sketch of the Vegetation of the Indian Empire. He continued the compilation of his father Sir William Jackson Hooker's project, Icones Plantarum (Illustrations of Plants), producing volumes eleven through nineteen, with most of the illustrations being prepared for him by Matilda Smith.

Honours and commemoration

1847 Fellow of the Royal Society

1869 Companion of the Order of the Bath

1869 Election to the American Philosophical Society

1877 Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India

1873 President of the Royal Society

1883 Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society

1885 Foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

1892 Honorary membership of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society

1897 Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Star of India

1902 Pour le Mérite from the Kingdom of Prussia, awarded by the German Emperor

1907 Order of Merit

Hooker Oak in Chico, California, was named after him.

Hooker Island in Franz Josef Land was named after him following its 1880 discovery.

Taxa named in honour

There are number (at least 30) of plants with specific name hookeri and hookeriana. Many of them are named in honour of Joseph Dalton Hooker, including Banksia hookeriana, Grevillea hookeriana, Iris hookeriana, Polygonatum hookeri, Tainia hookeriana and Sarcococca hookeriana.

Land snail Notodiscus hookeri (Reeve, 1854)

Sea Lion: New Zealand or Hooker's Sea Lion Phocarctos hookeri (Gray, 1844)

Selected publications

1844–1859: Flora Antarctica: the botany of the Antarctic voyage. 3 vols, 1844 (general), 1853 (New Zealand), 1859 (Tasmania). Reeve, London.

1864–1867: Handbook of the New Zealand flora

1849: Niger flora

1849–1851: The Rhododendrons of Sikkim–Himalaya

1854: Himalayan Journals, or notes of a naturalist, in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas, Khasia Mountains ...

1855: Illustrations of Himalayan plants

1855: Flora indica, with Thomas Thomson

1858: Handbook of the British Flora: A Description of the Flowering Plants and Ferns Indigenous To, Or Naturalized In, the British Isles : for the Use of Beginners and Amateurs. L. Reeve. 1858. ("Bentham & Hooker")

1859: A century of Indian orchids

1859: Introductory Essay to the Flora of Australia

1862–1883: Genera plantarum ad exemplaria imprimis in herbariis kewensibus servata definita. Vol. Primum, Sistens Dicotyledonum Polypetalarum Ordines LXXXIII: Ranunculareas—Cornaceas. London: Reeve & Co. 1867. with George Bentham

1862–1883: Genera plantarum ad exemplaria imprimis in Herbariis kewensibus servata definita Vol. Secundi (in Latin). London: Reeve & Company. 1876. with George Bentham

1870; 1878: The student's flora of the British Isles. Macmillan, London.

1872–1897: The Flora of British India: Volume V, Chenopodiaceæ to Orchideæ. London: L. Reeve & Co. 1980 [1890]. ISBN 0-913196-29-0.