G.C.S.I., C.B., F.R.S.(1817–1911).

Botanist.

A new biography of Hooker, Joseph Dalton appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Joseph Dalton Hooker was born at Halesworth, Suffolk, on 30 June 1817, the second son of Sir William Jackson Hooker, regius professor of botany at the University of Glasgow and, afterwards, director of Kew Gardens. He was educated at Glasgow High School and at the University, where he graduated M.D. in 1839. In that year Sir James Clark Ross took him as naturalist in HMS Erebus on his Antarctic expedition. During the winter months (1840–42) the expedition explored Tasmania, New Zealand, and the Falkland Islands. Hooker spent three months in New Zealand and, with Colenso and Sinclair, made many botanical excursions and collected many specimens. On his return to England in 1843 he began to collate the botanical results of his explorations – his two-volume Flora Novae Zelan-diae appearing from 1852 to 1854. About 1843 Hooker became friendly with Charles Darwin and in the succeeding years the two discussed every point of Darwin's theory of evolution. From 1848 to 1851 he explored northern India and little-known regions of the Himalayas, collecting specimens for his Flora Indica. He became assistant director at Kew in 1855; and, in 1860, began work on the monumental Genera Plantarum (1862–83). In 1865 he succeeded his father as director of Kew, with the result that, for the next 20 years, administrative matters restricted the time he could devote to original research. Nevertheless, he found time to publish descriptive Floras for several colonial Governments, his Handbook of New Zealand Flora being completed in 1867. After his retirement from Kew in 1885 he continued his researches and explorations. In 1896 he edited the EndeavourJournal of Sir Joseph Banks.

Among the many honours showered upon Hooker were three from New Zealand institutions: he was an honorary member of the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury (1863); a silver medallist at the New Zealand Industrial Exhibition (1865); and an honorary member of the New Zealand Institute (1871). He died at Sunningdale, England, on 10 December 1911.

After his death the London Times wrote of Hooker: “He is perhaps the most distinguished botanist of his time. Certainly as a field botanist he had an unrivalled knowledge gained … from personal study and observation in almost every quarter of the globe… He will be most remembered for his labours in geographical botany. Essays like those on the ‘Flora of Australia’ and ‘The Distribution of Arctic Plants’ were largely instrumental in overthrowing the old doctrine of the ‘immutability of species’”.

by Bernard John Foster, M.A., Research Officer, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington.

• Life and Letters of Sir J. D. Hooker, Huxley, L., ed. (1953)
• The Times (London), 12 Dec 1911 (Obit).