Hooker, Sir William Jackson 1785-1865
English botanist

Born in Norwich, Norfolk, he collected specimens in Scotland in 1806, and later in Iceland. His first five botanical works dealt mostly with mosses but his British Jungermanniae (22 parts, 1812-16) established hepaticology (the study of liverworts) as an independent discipline. In 1820 he became Regius Professor of Botany at Glasgow and in 1841 became first director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. While at Kew he published several still standard works on ferns, including Genera Filicum (12 parts, 1838-42), Species Filicum (5 vols, 1846-64) and Synopsis Filicum (1865). He was knighted in 1836.