FROM SYSTEM GARDEN TO SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH: THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE’S SCHOOL OF BOTANY UNDER ITS FIRST TWO PROFESSORS (1906-1973) ____ by Linden Gillbank 1 School of Botany School of Botany, foundation headS of department ___ ___ The School of Botany Foundation was established in PROFESSOR ALFRED J. EWART FLS FRS 1995 to enhance the endowment base of the School of 1906-1937 Botany. The Foundation raises funds for student prizes and ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR ETHEL I. McLENNAN scholarships and for the support of research programs. It 1937-1938 promotes plant science to the wider community, contributes to the development of educational material, and promotes PROFESSOR JOHN S. TURNER OBE FAA research links with industry. 1938-1973 ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR D. MALCOLM CALDER School of Botany, The University of Melbourne, Vic 3010 1975-1979, 1989-1990 www.botany.unimelb.edu.au PROFESSOR T. CARRICK CHAMBERS AM 1974, 1980-1984 ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR PETER M. ATTIWILL AM 1985-1988 2 PROFESSOR JEREMY D. PICKETT-HEAPS FRS FAA 1989 PROFESSOR ADRIENNE E. CLARKE AC FAA FTSE 1991 PROFESSOR PAULINE Y. LADIGES AO FAA 1992-2010 PREFACE Encouraged by the late Dr Sophie Ducker AM and the late the professorial chair appointments of the late Robert Dr David Ashton OAM, Dr Linden Gillbank embarked on her Bruce Knox (1974-1997) and Alan Baker (2000-2008), research of the history of the School of Botany, University of personal chair appointments, Pauline Ladiges and Antony Melbourne. She has delved into the archives and interviewed (Tony) Bacic, and more recent professorial promotions people to reveal the place of University botany in the 19th Geoffrey McFadden, Mark Burgman, Barbara Howlett and century and the development of botany teaching and Ian Woodrow. research under its first two professors, Alfred James Ewart The most significant achievement in the more recent history (1906-37) and John Stewart Turner (1938-73), and traced the of the School of Botany was the awarding in 1982 of the history of Botany from the earliest days of the University in first plant “Centre of Excellence” in Australia, funded by the 1850’s to the establishment of the department with its the Australian Research Council. The “Plant Cell Biology first Professor, Alfred James Ewart, appointed in 1906, to the Research Centre” (PCBRC), directed jointly by Bruce leadership of Professor John Stewart Turner. This historical Knox and Adrienne Clarke, was provided long-term, block account documents the teaching of botany to undergraduate funding that gave the research group financial security to students of science, agriculture, medicine, veterinary science tackle fundamental and difficult scientific questions – How is and arts, the first postgraduates, and the establishment of fertilisation controlled in plants? and How do plants perceive and resist fungal pathogens? – questions that could not be plant scientific research at Melbourne, even before the move achieved easily in the short term and without a critical mass into the red-brick Botany building on the eastern edge of the of people and resources. Laboratory accommodation was System Garden in 1929. Gillbank’s historical account provides 3 expanded in the School, and so continued a very productive insight into the people who shaped Botany; she describes a period in the history of the School that continues into the period of departmental disharmony, and Ewart’s struggle for twenty-first century. The PCBRC laid the foundation for two staff appointments, funding, students and space (issues not Cooperative Research centres that contributed strategic and unfamiliar in modern universities). Importantly she highlights applied research, realising the benefits of plant science for the academic strengths, pioneering scientific achievements society. Today the School includes a number of new research and reputations of the past botanists, including a significant centres or nodes of collaborative centres: The Australian number of renowned women. The School diversified under Centre for Functional Genomics, the Australian Centre of Professor Turner and his staff, spanning war-time and peace- Excellence for Risk Analysis, and the Australian Centre for time. Gillbank traces the foundations of our current strength in Environmental Decision Analysis. The “traditional” areas research through her accounts of the fields of plant physiology, of plant physiology, plant ecology and plant systematics, fungi and plant pathology, and ecology and conservation. which are also hallmarks of a strong Botany department, Since Turner’s reign as Professor, the School of Botany has continue, as does our connection with Melbourne’s Royal been led by Professor Carrick Chambers (later Director of the Botanic Garden and National Herbarium. Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney), Associate Professor Peter ______ Attiwill, Professor Jeremy Pickett-Heaps, Associate Professor Malcolm Calder, Laureate Professor Adrienne Clarke and Pauline Ladiges Professor Pauline Ladiges. The School also included s north-western corner of the University grounds (its surviving from SyStem central octagonal tower is sometimes called the Gazebo). From the early 1860s, when botany was required for the new Bachelor of Medicine (MB) degree, McCoy taught it Garden to to MB and Bachelor of Arts (BA) students. Mounting criticism caused the removal of the botanic garden Scientific from McCoy’s control in 1881. Then, when new professors added science subjects to the BA degree, the proportion reSearch: of BA students taking botany plummeted, leaving McCoy THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE’S SCHOOL with twenty-something BA and about 60 MB students in OF BOTANY UNDER ITS FIRST TWO the mid-1880s. PROFESSORS (1906-1973) PROFESSOR BALDWIN SPENCER ___ AND THE BSc DEGREE The 1887 establishment of the Bachelor nineteenth century of Science (BSc) degree brought a Botany zoologist to teach botany – Walter Botany was taught at the University of Baldwin Spencer, Professor of Biology Melbourne long before the institution (1887-1920), who brought Darwinian 4 of the science degree or faculty. ideas and laboratory-based biology. An intended component of the University’s Botany was part of Biology Part I, which intellectual life right from the start, botany was a compulsory first-year subject in was included in the arts and medicine the MB and BSc degrees and an optional degrees in the nineteenth century. subject in the BA degree. Most of the first-year biology class were medical PROFESSOR FREDERICK McCOY students. Biology Part II included a little AND THE SYSTEMATIC BOTANIC botany; Part III included none. GARDEN The garden-less Professor of Natural Botany was initially the responsibility of Science was left with a rarely-taken BSc one of the University’s four foundation subject, Systematic Botany. Strangely, professors – Frederick McCoy, Professor Gazebo, System Garden. Dr Harry Swart, 1987 as its systematic arrangement was of Natural Science (1854-99). McCoy increasingly obscured and obliterated, lectured on geology and palaeontology, zoology and the neglected botanic garden was sometimes called the comparative anatomy, chemistry, mineralogy and botany. System Garden, as it is today. By 1900 only the six biological Victoria’s Government Botanist, Dr Ferdinand Mueller, and two geological BSc graduates had studied any botany helped McCoy develop a herbarium and a botanic garden beyond first year. displaying labelled plants in a systematic (taxonomic) Into the twentieth century, medical students continued to be order around an elegant octagonal conservatory in the the main consumers of botany. With the establishment of the Science Faculty, Biology Part I remained a compulsory To undertake his two roles, Dr Alfred Ewart made twice-daily BSc and MB subject, but was no longer available to BA tram trips through the city and across the Yarra. students. In 1905, 12 BSc and more than 70 MB students GOVERNMENT BOTANIST, 1906-20 studied Biology Part I, but none of the five second-year BSc students took Biology Part II. As Government Botanist in Victoria’s Department of Agriculture, Ewart spent mornings in the National Herbarium Professors of geology, chemistry and biology now covered in the Domain near the (not yet Royal) Botanic Gardens. the intellectual territory of McCoy’s natural science; but He incorporated his government work on plant diseases, biology included little botany. University botany was in seed testing, plant identification and weeds into University the doldrums. curricula and arranged for University layinG the staff and students to undertake related research and taxonomic work on foundationS — Herbarium collections. the ewart yearS, Ewart sought to re-establish the 1906-37 languishing National Herbarium as Agriculture brought an English plant Victoria’s, and possibly Australia’s, physiologist to Australia’s first chair taxonomic authority, as it had been of botany. Concerned by falling under Mueller. Ewart and his University agricultural production, due to plant colleagues used Herbarium specimens diseases and other factors, the Victorian to establish many new species in 5 Government funded the establishment their 36-paper series, ‘Contributions of the University’s Faculty of Agriculture to the Flora of Australia’ (1906-30), and four-year Bachelor of Agricultural largely in The Victorian Naturalist and Science (BAgrSc) degree and three- Proceedings of the Royal Society year Diploma of Agriculture. With of Victoria. Some specimens were botany an essential component of collected during two 1911 expeditions both, the University