Albert Charles Seward | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 9 October 1863 Lancaster, Lancashire, England |
| Died | 11 April 1941 (aged 77) |
Sir Albert Charles Seward FRS (9 October 1863 – 11 April 1941) was a British botanist and geologist.
Albert Charles Seward | |
|---|---|
| |
| Born | 9 October 1863 Lancaster, Lancashire, England |
| Died | 11 April 1941 (aged 77) |
Sir Albert Charles Seward FRS (9 October 1863 – 11 April 1941) was a British botanist and geologist.
Seward was born in Lancaster. His first education was at Lancaster Grammar School and he then went on to St John's College, Cambridge, intending to fulfil parents' wish that he would dedicate his life to the Church. His boyhood interest in botany and zoology soon resurfaced, helped along by inspiring lectures from William Crawford Williamson. His aptitude soon became apparent and he was appointed lecturer in botany at Cambridge University in 1890, later becoming a tutor at Emmanuel, and still later succeeding Harry Marshall Ward as Professor of Botany, Cambridge University from 1906 to 1936. He became Master of Downing College in 1915 and subsequently became Vice-Chancellor.: 232
He was a founding member of the University of Cambridge Eugenics Society, eventually becoming its Chairman. He was joint editor (with Francis Darwin) of More letters of Charles Darwin (1903).
He was elected as fellow of the Royal Society in 1898 and was awarded the Murchison Medal of the Geological Society of London in 1908. Seward's studies of Mesozoic palaeobotany earned him membership of the Royal Society at the youthful age of thirty-five. He devoted a great deal of time to education, both as college and departmental administrator, and as writer on educational matters. In 1934 he was awarded the Darwin Medal.
In 1931 Seward dismissed the notion of a biological origin of stromatolites. At the time, this was for the most part correct. Many of the objects called stromatolites in Seward's era were inorganic in origin and misinterpreted as biologic in origin. However, Seward's claim that all stromatolites were inorganic was later shown to be incorrect, and may have delayed scientific understanding of stromatolites.
His interest in plants went beyond the living and the fossil. In 1935 he published a study on the floral carvings in the chapter house of Southwell Minster.
This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation Seward when citing a botanical name.
Seward died in Oxford, aged 77.
His daughter Dorothy married his prize pupil, John Walton (son of the artist Edward Arthur Walton), who later became Professor of Botany at Glasgow University.
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