John Bretland Farmer, 1865-1944

Abstract

By the death of Sir John Farmer in 1944 biology lost a remarkable personality, notable not only in academic botany and in the field of its application, but also as an administrator. He was born on 5 April 1865 at Atherstone, the son of John Henry Farmer and Elizabeth Corbett, née Rutland. The family was an old Leicestershire one of which the earlier name was Warde, the change to Farmer being made in the sixteenth century. He attended the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School at Atherstone, but owing to temporary ill-health he left after five years and was later educated privately. He went to Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1883 holding a demyship in natural science from that year to 1887, when he took a first class in the Honours School of Natural Science. While at Oxford Farmer came under the influence of Isaac Bayley Balfour, who was Sherardian Professor of Botany for the brief period of 1884-1888, when he went to Edinburgh as Professor of Botany in the University and Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden, a post which Balfour’s father had held before him. In after life Farmer always spoke most warmly of Bayley Balfour as teacher, botanist, gardener and friend, and ended an obituary notice of his old teacher with this high appreciation, ‘Really great men are very rare and Isaac Bayley Balfour was one of them’. It is probable that Farmer owed to Bayley Balfour not only encouragement in botany but also his gardening enthusiasm.