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100 Years of Plant Sciences in Cambridge: 1904–2004

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100 Years of Plant Sciences in Cambridge: 1904–2004 100 Years of Plant Sciences in Cambridge: 1904–2004 Introduction This booklet celebrates the centenary of the University building of the subject, while others were influential internationally that houses the Department of Plant Sciences or, to use its through their writings. earlier name, the Botany School. It also commemorates the life The first two sections of this booklet cover the life of Marshall and work of Harry Marshall Ward, whose vision led to the Ward, and the old and new buildings for Botany. There are then opening of a new building by the King and Queen on 1 March sections dealing with the many achievements in Cambridge 1904. The story of Marshall Ward is both remarkable and over the last 100 years in seven major sub-disciplines. In these tragic. He was forced to leave school at 14, but managed to sections our emphasis is on the impacts of the earlier get to Cambridge, supported by an anonymous benefactor. researchers, and we say little about those who are doing Soon in the fast stream, he was elected FRS at the age of outstanding work now. Next there are sections on the parts 34. He transformed his played by the Assistant branch of botany, and was Staff, and by the Botanic one of two outstanding Garden, for teaching and candidates when elected research across the whole to the Cambridge Chair subject. The present Head in 1895. He had diabetes, of Department and the and died at the age of 52, present Professor of only two years after the Botany provide an account new Botany School was of the current position of officially opened. the Department, and the During the years 1904– way forward. We end on a 14 the Botany School lighter note, based on had only eight members the semi-scurrilous Tea of Academic Staff at a Phytologist, which is nearly time, but among them as old as the building. The were those destined to initials at the end of each dominate the development section indicate the author of their respective sub- The north front of the new Botany School in 1904 chiefly responsible. disciplines in Britain for We are indebted to the first four decades of the Professor Peter Ayres of 20th century. Their students filled many of the Chairs in other Lancaster University for access to his biography Harry Universities. When the International Congress of Botany was Marshall Ward: the Fungal Thread of Death, to be published by the held in Britain in 1930, Cambridge was the natural venue. In the American Phytopathological Society in 2004. We also second half of the 20th century, when there were so many other acknowledge permission from various organizations and Botany Departments in Britain, Cambridge inevitably played a individuals to publish photographs and drawings. In some less dominating part. Nevertheless some members of staff cases we have been unable to find the photographer. We attracted an exceptionally large proportion of the young thank our colleagues for correcting our draft accounts. researchers who would occupy leading roles in the development Peter J Grubb E Anne Stow S Max Walters 1 Harry Marshall Ward and the new Cambridge Botany It was very much the vision of Harry Marshall Ward which led Thiselton-Dyer was later to recall the impression the new to the opening in March 1904 of a new Botany School that was young student made on his teachers: generally acknowledged at the time to be the best equipped in ‘Vines and I soon discovered that we had got hold of a man Britain. When Marshall Ward was appointed to the chair in of exceptional ability. In the examination at the end of the 1895, the state of the Department was far from satisfactory. He course he soared away from all the other students and stood took over from CC Babington, who had been appointed to the alone at the head of the first class. The strain of the work on chair in 1861 in succession to JS Henslow, the man who was both teachers and students was certainly severe: there was the such a vital inspiration to the young Charles Darwin. During keenest competition amongst the best men to respond to the his long tenure of the chair Babington ignored the exciting demands made upon them, and the tension was sometimes new discoveries being made in Germany in rather acute. On one occasion Marshall both the morphology and the physiology of Ward fainted at his work from no other plants, and showed interest only in his cause I think than over-excitement.’ Herbarium. Under the old statutes he was It is reasonable to speculate, in view of elected for life, and he clung on until the Harry’s death at the age of 52 through age of 87. The Department was housed in diabetes, that he could already have been inadequate buildings (see p. 4), and it showing symptoms of the disease in his clearly presented a challenge to any student days. successor to the Chair. When Marshall Ward decided to aim for A key step toward modernization was the Chair at Cambridge is not clear, but he the appointment of SH Vines as a Fellow was certainly unhappy with the very small and Lecturer of Christ’s College (Charles salary he received as Professor of Botany at Darwin’s old college) in 1876. He spent the the Royal Indian Engineering College at summer of 1877 with Julius von Sachs in Cooper’s Hill, London, a post he held for Würzburg. On return he began a very ten years. When the Cambridge Chair was successful practical class in Botany in a finally advertised in 1895, two of the most room made available to him by Sir Michael obvious candidates, both Cambridge Foster, Professor of (Animal) Physiology Harry Marshall Ward educated, had already taken Chairs at other and amateur botanist and gardener. The universities: Vines at Oxford and his pupil FO room was equipped for observation and Bower at Glasgow. Vines was an Elector. experiment at Vines’ personal expense! When the young Francis Darwin, Charles Darwin’s third son, had become a Marshall Ward came up to Christ’s in October 1876, he was Lecturer in 1884, and the Reader in Botany in 1888 when Vines stimulated more by Vines than by anyone else. He had already left for Oxford. From 1892 he was running the Department as experienced Vines’ enthusiasm at the newly formed Science Deputy to Babington, but he was also active at the highest levels School in South Kensington, where TH Huxley was teaching in science in Britain (Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society, the new evolutionary biology and training teachers for the President of the British Association, knighted 1913). In 1895 he rapidly expanding schools throughout the country. Here W was an Elector, not a candidate for the Chair. Thiselton-Dyer, soon to become Director of the Royal Botanic There was a strong internal candidate: Walter Gardiner, Gardens at Kew, was teaching the botanical parts of Huxley’s five years younger than Marshall Ward, also trained under Biology course with MA Lawson and Vines as his juniors. Vines and Sachs and nurtured by Foster, made a Lecturer in 2 succession to Darwin from 1888, a pioneer in the study of pioneer in palaeobotany. It seems certain also that it was in plasmodesmata, and elected FRS at the age of 30. He had also Manchester that he met his future wife Selina Kingdon, to revived the Botanical Museum and greatly extended the whom he was engaged for seven years before their marriage collection. Ruled out on grounds of ill health, he was bitterly in 1883. Lucas, who died tragically in 1876 on an African disappointed by the verdict and resigned in 1897, thereafter expedition aged only 25, had become Harry’s benefactor. working in a laboratory at his home. Under his will he left money at Mortlock’s Bank in The new Cambridge Professor of Botany represented a stark Cambridge to pay for Harry’s course at Christ’s. contrast to his two predecessors, Babington and Henslow, who Harry graduated with First Class Honours in 1879, were both of ‘gentlemanly stock’ to whom an Oxbridge chair and went immediately to Würzburg to experience the would have been an entirely normal way of life for any reasonably new German botany for himself under Sachs. Although we intelligent man. Harry Marshall learn from one of Harry’s letters Ward was the eldest child of that he was not favourably Francis and Mary Marshall Ward. impressed by Sachs, whom He was born in 1854 in Hereford, he found to be ‘a narrow and where his father, originally from intolerant man, who rarely Lincoln, held the post of Lay stirred from his laboratory’, Clerk at the Cathedral, taking a Harry’s enthusiasm for the new daily part in the choral services plant physiology pioneered by for the modest salary of £50 per Sachs was such that he was to annum. Money was always short publish in 1887 in three sizeable in the Ward household, and volumes his own translation of Harry’s father, who styled Sachs’ Lectures in Physiology. himself ‘Professor of Music’, His greatest tribute to Sachs, supplemented his salary with however, was in his own earnings from music pupils, research in which he brought a and from performing the physiological perspective to sentimental ballads so popular in Part of a section of a coffee leaf showing on the underside plant pathology and helped to Victorian times. After returning uredospores of Hemileia vastatrix, the cause of the leaf-fall establish a new discipline.
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