Abstract
WITH deep regret we record the death at Kew on December 21, in his eighty-seventh year, of Emeritus Prof. Daniel Oliver. The eldest son of another Daniel Oliver, the deceased was born at Newcastle-upon-Tyne on February 6, 1830, and was educated partly in private schools, partly at the Friends' School, Brookfield, near Wigton. Attached from an early age to botanical study and a youthful member of a local scientific society, we find him in 1847 contributing to the Phytologist a list of rare plants from different geological formations, and in 1850 adding a new genus to the flora of the United Kingdom. In 1851 he became a fellow of the Edinburgh Botanical Society, and in 1853 of the Linnean Society. His reputation as a keen and critical worker, gained in the North of England, was already such as to prompt Sir William Hooker to invite him to assist his son in the heavy task of arranging and distributing the botanical collections accumulated by the East India Company and to induce him in 1858 to become an assistant in the herbarium at Kew. On settling there Oliver instituted in 1859 a course of lectures on botany, which he continued to conduct until 1874, for the benefit of the young gardeners. He proved so excellent a teacher that in 1861 he was appointed to the botanical chair which had been occupied by Lindley at University College, London. The extent and accuracy of his botanical knowjedge led to his election to the Royal Society in 1863 and to his appointment, on the retirement of Mr. A. Black in 1864, to the keepership of the herbarium and library at Kew. The chair at University College, now held by his distinguished son, Oliver retained until 1888; the keepership at Kew he occupied until he retired from the public service in 1890. After his retirement he succeeded Sir Joseph Hooker as editor, on behalf of the Bentham Trustees, of the “Icones Plantarum.” This duty he fulfilled for five years, so that his connection with the institution where he worked so long, and for which he did so much, was not finally severed until 1895.
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Prof. Daniel Oliver, F.R.S. . Nature 98, 331 (1916). https://doi.org/10.1038/098331a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/098331a0