News and Views

Abstract

PROF. F. O. BOWER, whose presidential address to the British Association is printed in our Supplement this week, is an outstanding figure in British botany. Following a brief period as lecturer in botany at the Imperial College of Science, South Kensington, he became Regius professor of botany in Glasgow in 1885, and there during his forty years of tenure of his chair devoted himself with boundless energy to the study of problems of plant morphology and affinity. His influence as a teacher, investigator, and administrator has been marked, and it may truly be said that he has done more than any other living botanist to form botanical opinion and stimulate research in his field of special inquiry. As a writer he has shown rare gifts of both analysis and synthesis. He is the author of many publications which have been widely read and constantly admired, both for their clarity of expression and constructive reasoning. Chief among these are “The Origin of a Land Flora”, published in 1908, and his works on the “Ferns”, published since 1923; but he has also devoted himself to more popular exposition in such works as “The Botany of the Living Plant” and “Plants and Man”. He has held the presidential chair of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, has thrice been president of the Botanical Section of the British Association, and among the numerous other distinctions which have fallen to him in recognition of his work are a Royal Medal of the Royal Society, the Linnean Medal of the Linnean Society, and the Neill Prize of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.