Francis Darwin

Sir Francis Darwin, Darwin also Frank ( born August 16, 1848 in Downe, Kent, † September 19, 1925 in Cambridge ) was a British botanist. He was the seventh child ( third son ) by Charles Darwin.

Life and work

Darwin attended Trinity College ( Cambridge ) and first studied mathematics, then science; he graduated in 1870 He then studied medicine at St. George's Medical School in London, where he in 1875 acquired the title of Bachelor of Medicine.; but he did not practice as a doctor. 1887 gave Francis Darwin 's autobiography of his 1882 deceased father ("The Autobiography of Charles Darwin " ) out and put two books from his correspondence together: "The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin " (1887 ) and "More Letters of Charles Darwin " ( 1905). He was also editor of Thomas Huxley's "On the Reception of the Origin of Species " (1887 ). In 1888 he became professor of botany at Cambridge.

Scientific work

The main themes of his work came from the field of plant physiology and related, among other things, the stomata, the ant attractant glands, the growth of plant parts and the luxuriant growth of carnivorous plants when fed with meat ( he was the 2nd edition of Charles Darwin's " Insectivorous Plants " out ).

Francis Darwin 1874-82 worked with his father in experiments to study the movement of plants, especially phototropism, and they jointly published The Power of Movement in Plants (1880 ). The fact that the cotyledons of young grass shoot grow towards the light, they showed by experiments in which they compared the responses of grass sprouts with covered and uncovered coleoptiles. These observations led later to the discovery of auxins.

Family

Darwin was married three times and widowed twice.

In 1874, he married Amy Ruck, but she died in 1876, four days after the birth of their son Bernard Darwin, who was a journalist and wrote several books about the game of golf.

His second wife married Ellen Crofts Darwin and they had a daughter, Frances Darwin (1886-1960), a poet who later classicists Francis Macdonald Cornford married and became known as a poet under her married name Frances Crofts Cornford. Ellen died in 1903.

Darwin's third wife was Florence Henrietta Fisher, daughter of Herbert William Fisher and Frederic William Maitland widow, whom he married in 1913, the year in which he was raised to the status of Knights. Her sister Adeline Fisher was the first wife of Darwin's second cousin, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Honors

On 8 June 1882 he was elected as a member ( "Fellow" ) to the Royal Society, in 1912, named after his father, Darwin Medal awarded him. He was also a member of the Linnean Society of London and the Zoological Society of London. In 1913 he was knighted. In 1909 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina.