Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker O.M., G.S.C.I. 2 vols. 1918. (PoD-Reprint 2011). (Cambridge Library Collection, Life Sciences). map. illus. xx p. gr8vo. Paper bd.

Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911) was one of themost 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 (1860-1933), who published this standard biographyin 1918. The first volume describes Hooker's early life and his career up to 1860, and the second his management of Kew, his later travels, and the end of his long life.