William Jackson Hooker

William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865), botanist, was the first Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in which capacity he had significant influence on the study of Australian flora. Born and educated in Norwich, Hooker was encouraged in his study of natural history by his father, Joseph Hooker, an amateur gardener and botanist. He became acquainted with a number of prominent botanists, including Dawson Turner and Sir Joseph Banks, at whose suggestion he went on a field trip to Iceland in 1809. Hooker was elected to the Linnean Society of London in 1806; became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1812; and in 1820, on Banks’s recommendation, was appointed professor of botany at Glasgow University. Hooker published consistently throughout the 1820s and 1830s, writing books on subjects such as the flora of Britain, the Pacific and North America and establishing two botanical journals. In 1841, aged 57, he was appointed Director at Kew Gardens, and set about to revitalise them, sending plant collectors to every continent and corresponding with scientists worldwide. Under his direction – and later that of his second eldest son, Joseph Dalton Hooker – Kew developed a vast and significant collection for its herbarium, making Kew a focus for the study and classification of numerous species of Australian plants as well as those of many other nations.

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2013