Baker John Gilbert

(b. Guisborough, England, 13 January 1834; d. Kew, England, 16 August 1920)

botany.

Baker’s parents, John Baker and Mary Gilbert, moved from Guisborough to Thirsk, Yorkshire, in 1834. A Quaker, he attended the Friends’ School at Ackworth; when he was twelve, he was transferred to the Friends’ School at Bootham, York, which then enjoyed a reputation for natural history study. His formal education ended in 1847, and he spent the next eighteen years in a drapery business in Thirsk. This uncongenial occupation did not impede Baker’s enthusiasm for natural history; when only fifteen, he communicated a new record of a rare Carex to The Phytologist. In 1854 he collaborated with J, Nowell in a supplement to Baines’s Flora of Yorkshire. Baker’s zeal helped to create the Botanical Exchange Club of the Thirsk Natural History Society; when the society was dissolved in 1865, the club moved to London, with Baker as one of the two curators. In May 1864 Baker’s home and business premises were completely destroyed by fire and his entire herbarium and library were lost, including the stock of his book North Yorkshire (1863). This catastrophe caused him seriously to consider his future career, and when an opportunity was offered to engage in botanical research, he readily abandoned the drapery business.

The opportunity arose from an invitation by J. D. Hooker, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, to join the staff of its herbarium. In 1866 Baker was appointed first assistant in the Kew Herbarium, with the initial task of finishing W.J. Hooker’s Synopsis Filicum, left incomplete on his death in 1865. To supplement his slender salary, Baker lectured on botany at the London Hospital Medical School from 1869 to 1881; the following year he was appointed lecturer in botany at the Chelsea Physic Garden. In 1890 he became keeper of the herbarium and library at Kew, serving until his retirement in 1899.

His very able work on Hooker’s Synopsis Filicum earned Baker wide recognition as an expert on vascular cryptogams, and he was invited by Martius to undertake the volume on ferns in his monumental Flora Brasiliensis; Baker later contributed the Compositae to the same work. An early interest in Rosa, manifested in a review of the genus in The Naturalist for 1864, was followed by a monograph on British roses in 1869; he also wrote the botanical descriptions for E.A. Willmott’s Genus Rosa (1910-1914). He published monographic accounts of other plant families and genera. and made substantial contributions to Flora of Tropical Africa, Flora Capensis, and Flora of British India. Baker was one of the great English taxonomists and a pioneer investigator in plant ecology. Botany was his raison d’être; his enormous capacity for work and his output were impressive by any standard.

Baker was a notably effective lecturer, clear and concise, and had an instinctive sympathy for the problems of his students. His long, fruitful career was attended by numerous distinctions: fellowship of the Royal Society in 1878, the Victoria Medal of Honour of the Royal Horticultural Society in 1897, in acknowledgment of his valuable services to horticulture, and the Linnean Medal in 1899. His first child (he married Hannah Unthank in 1860), Edmund Gilbert Baker, emulated his father by choosing botany as his vocation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Baker’s writings include Supplement to Baines’ Flora of Yorkshire (London, 1854), written with J. Nowell; North Yorkshire (London, 1863); the completion of Sir W. J. Hooker’s Synopsis Filicum (London, 1868, 1874); “A Monograph of the British Roses,” in Journal of the Linnean Society, 11 , no. 52 (1869) 197-243; Handbook okf the Fern-allies (London, 1887); Handbook of the Amaryllideae (London, 1888); Handbook of the Bromeliaceae (London, 1889); and Handbook of the Irideae(London, 1892). He wrote over 400 papers, most of which are listed in the Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers, 1867-1914; I, 164-165; VII, 74-75; IX, 102-104: XIII, 253-254.

II. Secondary Literature. Obituary notices are Botanical Society and Exchange Club of the British Isles, 6 (1920), 93-100; James Britten, in Journal of Botany, 58 (1920), 233-238; and Sir David Prain, in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 92b (1912), xxiv-xxx.

R.G.C.Desmond