In the 21st-century Department of Plant Sciences, specialists in rainforest ecosystems rub shoulders with molecular geneticists, and students hear lectures by experts in epigenetics before examining biodiversity in the University Botanic Garden. This exceptional breadth results from the very prolonged development of botany as an academic subject in Cambridge.
Botanical teaching and research in Cambridge dates from the time of William Turner, whose New Herball of 1551-68 records the botanical features of 238 plants native to England, and marks the beginning of plant systematics and taxonomy in this country. Turner and his colleagues studied plants with a view to elucidating their pharmaceutical properties – a powerful impetus that still lies behind much of today’s research.
The guiding genius in the development of Cambridge botany was John Ray, one of the energetic English Renaissance scholars who established natural science as a field worthy of academic study. Ray was passionate about botany, and searched the University for someone to instruct him: But, to my astonishment, among so many masters of learning and luminaries of letters I found not a single person who was deeply versed in Botany, and only one or two who had even a slight acquaintance with the subject...so why should not I, endowed with ample leisure, if not with great ability, try to remedy this deficiency...? Thus determined, Ray shored up Cambridge botany by giving instruction himself and by publishing seminal material, including the first flora of Cambridgeshire (1660) and of England (1670).
Botany, like other natural and experimental subjects, languished in the 18th century, although, curiously, the first Professor of Botany, Richard Bradley, was appointed in that century, in 1724. His successors were John Martyn, and then his son Thomas Martyn, who recognised the importance of the Linnean system of nomenclature; he is also remembered, along with the benefactor Richard Walker, as a founder of the Botanic Garden, which became an early site for experimental botany.
- John Stevens Henslow
Our present home on the Downing Site was established in 1904 through the extraordinary scientific and administrative ability of Harry Marshall Ward, whose interest in German scientific advances and experience of practical forestry are examples of the international co-operation that is still such an important part of life in the contemporary Department.
- Front cover of Oaks and Oak Woods, a Field Study Book by AG Tansley, Methuen, London, 1952
The founders of botanical science would not recognise many of the methods and techniques employed by modern plant scientists, but without their pioneering work on naming and classification, and their early experiments on the function, structure and growth patterns of plants, no current work at the molecular level – which enables us to make advances in the breeding and conservation of plants – would be possible.
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