Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker O.M. G.C.S.I.

Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (18171911) was one of the most eminent botanists of the later nineteenth century. Educated at Glasgow he developed his studies of plant life by examining specimens all over the world. After several successful scientific expeditions first to the Antarctic and later to India he was appointed to succeed his father as Director of the Botanical Gardens at Kew. Hooker was the first to hear of and support Charles Darwin''s theory of natural selection and over their long friendship the two scientists exchanged many letters. Another close friend was the scientist T. H. Huxley and it was the latter''s son Leonard (18601933) who published this standard biography in 1918. The second volume details Hooker''s management of Kew his later travels and the end of his long life.