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He Made Plants a Profession Jim Endersby Revisits the Legacy of Trailblazing Botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker

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He Made Plants a Profession Jim Endersby Revisits the Legacy of Trailblazing Botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS BOTANY He made plants a profession Jim Endersby revisits the legacy of trailblazing botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker. oseph Dalton Hooker, born 200 years ago before his death in December 1911, the the “administrator of a large public depart- this month, made extraordinary contri- 94-year-old Hooker was still hard at work ment” he had to “drag a lengthening chain Jbutions to science over a life (1817–1911) on a comprehensive reclassification of the of correspondence” and could not spend his that spanned the Victorian era and beyond. genus Impatiens (the Himalayan balsams; brief holidays on research. Royal Society president and director of see page 474). And, as Charles Darwin’s Hooker’s first love was plants. Aged just the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, he was closest friend, Hooker was part of a collec- seven, he began attending the Glasgow knighted in 1877 for scientific services to tive effort that, in the decade after the 1859 University botany lectures of his father, THE RHODODENDRONS OF the British Empire. publication of On The Origin of Species, William Jackson Hooker, and joined the Hooker presided over his own empire, shifted opinion radically towards accept- students on field trips. As soon as Joseph too — a global network of botanic gardens, ance of the idea of evolution by natural had obtained his medical degree from REEVE, BENHAM AND REEVE. LONDON; from Sydney to Calcutta and Trinidad, selection. Glasgow, he boarded HMS Erebus as offi- HOOKER (1849-51). which were used to investigate economi- cial botanist on a four-year expedition to cally vital plants such as rubber and to A RESPECTABLE TRADE the southern oceans. Over the course of arrange where they could be cultivated Hooker was one of the first to pursue a paid his life, he travelled from Antarctica to the SIKKIM-HIMALAYA. profitably. Hooker’s numerous expeditions (and successful) scientific life and make Himalayas, and from Africa’s Atlas Moun- took him to remote regions, and he wrote doing so respectable, which paved the way tains to the North American Rockies, in foundational works on plant classification, for the careers of modern scientists. In fact, search of plants. such as The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage he sounded all too much like a modern Among the legacies of Hooker’s Indian of H.M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror scientist in 1868, in an address to the del- travels was the profusely illustrated The in 1839–1843 (1844– egates and guests of the British Association Rhododendrons of Sikkim-Himalaya (1849), NATURE.COM 60); Handbook of the for the Advancement of Science (BAAS), of whose stunning hand-coloured plates For more on science New Zealand Flora which he was president. He complained that helped to ignite a rhododendron craze in in culture see: (1864); and The Flora he would have liked to “sketch the rise and Britain. However, his most lasting legacy was nature.com/ of British India (1872– progress of Scientific Botany”, but was sty- probably the Genera Plantarum (1862–83), booksandarts 97). Even in the weeks mied by the pressures of official duties. As which he co-wrote with George Bentham 472 | NATURE | VOL 546 | 22 JUNE© 20172017 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All ri ghts reserved. ©2017 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All ri ghts reserved. BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT more complex. Hooker objected to Ayrton’s accepted natural selection. Even The demand that applicants for clerical positions Guardian (a conservative Anglican news- at Kew take the civil-service examinations paper, not its current liberal namesake) rather than be appointed on Hooker’s whim. acknowledged Darwinism’s “triumphant Ayrton had also insisted that all building and almost unopposed” reign. Such was the work at Kew be put out to tender; Hooker debt of Darwinism to Hooker; but what did used the same firm he and his father had Darwinism do for him? always used. If anyone was trying to During his first voyage to Antarctica, put science on a more professional Joseph had written to his father, “if I cannot basis, it was Ayrton. be a naturalist with a fortune, I must not be Unlike Darwin, whose father’s too vain to take honourable compensation wealth spared him the need to earn for my trouble”. his own money, Hooker had to “Hooker had One of the many find a way to make a living from to find a way problems Hooker botany without compromising his to make a faced as he worked gentlemanly status. The world of science living from for that compen- was changing rapidly. When William botany without sation was that Hooker was appointed to the chair at compromising botany had little Glasgow in 1820, he had never heard — his gentlemanly status at the time; much less delivered — a university lecture. status.” it was seen as too He owed the position to the support of his heavily focused aristocratic patron Joseph Banks, de facto on collection and description. Darwin- director of Kew under King George III. Half ism offered the prospect of real, applicable a century later, the Darwinian young guard scientific laws. In Origin, Darwin argued, Specimens featured were supposedly committed to eradicating for example, that “community of descent in Joseph Hooker’s such practices, yet Joseph Hooker privately is the hidden bond which naturalists have The Rhododendrons referred to Kew’s herbarium collections been unconsciously seeking”. That provided of Sikkim-Himalaya, (which his father had created) as “future a sound scientific basis for what had previ- illustrated by estates” comparable to inherited land. The ously been largely a matter of individual, Walter Hood Fitch. government’s reluctance to lose these valu- often idiosyncratic, expertise. For Hooker, able collections was crucial in ensuring that using evolution to put plants in their proper when William died in 1865, Joseph stepped place within the system of classification was and which laid the foundations for much of into the post. also a way of putting botany into a better modern plant classification. place within science. Historians have tended to lump Hooker DEBT TO DARWINISM Yet being a naturalist with a fortune in with Darwin’s other young supporters. Hooker became the first scientist to pub- would have been his first choice, as the The biologist Thomas Henry Huxley and licly embrace Darwinism, in 1859. In his argument with Ayrton shows. Hooker’s physicist John Tyndall, for instance, took 1868 BAAS speech, he reflected on the fate career bridged the old world of patronage every opportunity to attack what they saw of Darwin’s theory: although criticisms and the new one of government-funded as the corrupt Anglican hierarchy that held continued, he asserted that by this time, science. The latter opened careers to the back the progress of British science. Huxley, less than a decade after its first publication, relatively poor, but at the cost of bureau- Tyndall and Hooker were all members of the “almost every philosophical naturalist” cratic interference and that “lengthening slightly shadowy X Club, working behind chain of correspondence”. In Hooker’s the scenes to support Darwin and reform youth, there were no clear scientific paths, science. Yet a closer look at Hooker’s life so careers had to be improvised against a suggests that he was the odd one out. background of rapidly changing expecta- In the early 1870s, for instance, Hooker tions. The men (for it was almost all men) became embroiled in a public spat with of Hooker’s generation struggled to earn a Acton Smee Ayrton, the government min- living, persuading others that they were still ister responsible for Kew. Hooker railed gentlemen receiving an honorarium rather that Ayrton (who was famously rude) had than a salary. Hooker’s aristocratic values interfered in the running of the gardens and may seem slightly absurd today, but some had lied to the prime minister about it. The of science’s core ideals — such as suspicion press in general rallied to Hooker’s defence. of profit-driven secrecy instead of the free The Globe newspaper described Ayrton exchange of knowledge — are a legacy of his as someone “whom the thick breath of a need to act like a gentleman. ■ turbulent suburban democracy has blown for a moment into patronage and power”, Jim Endersby is reader in the history PRIVATE COLLECTION/PRISMATIC PICTURES/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES PICTURES/BRIDGEMAN COLLECTION/PRISMATIC PRIVATE threatening a public servant whose loss “to of science at the University of Sussex in the interests of universal science would be Brighton, UK. He is the author of Imperial absolutely irreparable”. In calmer terms, The Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices Times reported that a politician had told of Victorian Science, and has curated an Parliament to treat naturalists as gentlemen, exhibition, Joseph Hooker: Putting Plants with “consideration, delicacy, refinement, in their Place, which is at the Royal Botanic and courtesy”. Gardens Kew, until 17 September 2017. The truth about this disagreement was Joseph Hooker, photographed in his youth. e-mail: [email protected] ©2017 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All ri ghts reserved. ©2017 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All ri ghts r22ese rJUNEved. 2017 | VOL 546 | NATURE | 473 .
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