Catalogue description Papers of Joseph Hooker, Director of Kew Gardens

Joseph Dalton Hooker was born at Halesworth, Suffolk, on 30 June 1817, the second son of Sir William Jackson Hooker and his wife Maria, daughter of naturalist Dawson Turner. He was educated at Glasgow High School and later at Glasgow University, where his father was Regius Professor of Botany. He graduated M.D. in 1839. Hooker attended his father's university botany lectures from the age of seven and formed an interest in plant distribution as well as an early enthusiasm for travellers' tales such as Captain Cook's Voyages.

Hooker's passions for botany and travel were combined when he was appointed assistant surgeon aboard HMS Erebus, which - commanded by Sir James Clark Ross, and accompanied by its sister ship, the Terror - was to spend four years, from 1839 to 1843, exploring the southern oceans. Although Ross was a friend of William Hooker, and encouraged Joseph's botanical work during the voyage, William's income would not allow Joseph to travel as a self-financed, gentlemanly companion to the captain - as Charles Darwin had done. Instead, Joseph sailed as assistant surgeon, subject to naval discipline and with many shipboard duties to perform. This Antarctic expedition took Hooker through Cape of Good Hope, Kerguelen Island, Tasmania, Auckland Islands, Campbell Island, Victoria Barrier, Sydney, New Zealand, Cape Horn, Falkland Islands, Hermite Island off Tierra del Fuego and it even gave Hooker the opportunity to experience his childhood dream of seeing Kerguelen Land. The sojourns ashore allowed him to collect plants in relatively unexplored regions.

When the Erebus returned to England in 1843, Hooker needed to establish his reputation and find paid, botanical employment. Two years earlier, his father had been appointed first director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, which had just been brought under government control. However, while the prestigious appointment brought William Hooker to the centres of scientific life in London, it reduced his income and he was still unable to give his son much financial support. Fortunately William's influence was sufficient to secure an Admiralty grant of £1000 to cover the cost of the Botany of the Antarctic Voyage's plates, and Joseph received his Assistant Surgeon's pay while he worked on it. The book eventually formed six large volumes: two each for the Flora Antarctica, 1844-47; the Flora Novae-Zelandiae, 1851-53; and the Flora Tasmaniae, 1853-59.

It was also in 1843 that Hooker's correspondence with Charles Darwin began. Whilst still a student, Hooker had read proofs of Darwin's voyage of the Beagle and this had fired Hooker's enthusiasm. They had first met just before Hooker left on the Antarctic voyage and now began a lifelong friendship during which time Hooker remained a staunch supporter of Darwin and his theories.

In 1845, he was a candidate for the chair of botany at the University of Edinburgh but after failing to win the professorship, he secured work at the Geological Survey. This lasted from 1847-48 when he left to start his Himalayan expedition.

The imperial context and importance of Hooker's work is evident in his trip to the central and eastern Himalaya (1847-49). Hooker obtained a government grant for the trip and the Admiralty gave him free passage on the ships taking Lord Dalhousie, the newly-appointed Governor General, to India. After visiting Calcutta, Hooker went to Darjeeling and then to Sikkim where he and his travelling companion were arrested for border violation. Following his release, Hooker spent 1850 travelling with Thomas Thomson in Eastern Bengal and the two returned to England in 1851. Together they wrote the first volume of a projected Flora Indica (1855) but this was never completed (although Hooker eventually produced the Flora of British India, 1872-1897). The introductory essay on the geographical relations of India's flora, however, was to be one of Hooker's most important statements on biogeographical issues. Altogether Hooker collected about 7,000 species in India and Nepal and on his return to England, managed to secure another government grant while he classified and named them. His Himalayan Journals were published in 1854.

In August 1851, Hooker married Frances Harriet, eldest daughter of John Stevens Henslow, the Cambridge professor of Botany who had taught Darwin. Joseph and Frances had four sons and two surviving daughters. Frances died in 1874 and two years later Joseph married Hyacinth, the only daughter of William Samuel Symonds, with whom he had two more sons.

Since William Hooker had been put in charge, Kew Gardens had increased from eleven acres to over 300 acres, containing more than 20 glasshouses and over 4,500 living herbaceous plants. Faced with this enormous expansion, the government finally agreed that the director could not cope alone and their decision brought a conclusion to Joseph's long search for secure, paid employment; he was appointed Assistant Director on 5 June 1855.

In 1865 William Hooker died and Joseph succeeded him as director of Kew, a position he held until his retirement in 1885. The public function of Kew became a source of controversy in various ways during Joseph Hooker's tenure as Director. He asserted that the garden's 'primary objects are scientific and utilitarian, not recreational' and complained about the need to create elaborate floral displays for those he regarded as 'mere pleasure or recreation seekers … whose motives are rude romping and games' (Desmond 1995: 230, 234). Given these views, it is hardly surprising that he continued the tradition of allowing only serious botanical students and artists to enter the gardens during the morning, and resisted all attempts to extend the garden's opening hours for the general public.

In 1865, Hooker also began work with George Bentham on the substantial Genera Plantarum, the three massive volumes of which provide a summary of all of the genera of flowering plants and gymnosperms known at the time. This work was completed in 1883.

Hooker was the president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1868 and, in 1873, he was elected president of the Royal Society where he instituted various reforms designed to broaden public participation in the society, including the ladies soirées. When he retired from the presidency in 1878, Hooker was particularly proud of the £10,000 he had helped raise which allowed the restrictively-high membership dues to be reduced.

Hooker's son in law, William Thiselton-Dyer attested to Hooker's capacity for hard work, a claim borne out by the full list of his publications, which fills twenty pages. As well as writing, he continued to travel and visited Syria and Palestine (1860), Morocco (1871) and the U.S.A. (1877).

In 1893, Hooker commenced his fourth major work - the Index Kewensis which was initially funded by Darwin. It provides an index of the names of seed plants to various levels and continues to be updated to the present day. Hooker died in his sleep at midnight at home on 10 December 1911 after a short and apparently minor illness. He was buried, as he wished to be, alongside his father in the churchyard of St Anne's on Kew Green.