HOOKER, SIR WILLIAM JACKSON English botanist, was born at Norwich on July 6, 1785, and edu cated at the high school there. The natural history specimens of his first botanical expedition to Iceland in 1809 were lost on the homeward voyage through the burning of the ship, but Hooker was able to publish an account of the island and of its inhabitants and flora (Tour in Iceland, 181I). In 1814 he spent nine months in botanizing excursions in France, Switzerland and northern Italy, and in 1815 settled at Halesworth, Suffolk, devoting himself to the formation of his herbarium, which became of worldwide renown among botanists. In 1816 appeared the British Junger manniae, succeeded by a new edition of William Curtis's Flora Londinensis, by the Muscologia Britannica, prepared in conjunc tion with Dr. T. Taylor (1818), and by his Musci exotici (2 vols., 1818-2o), devoted to new foreign mosses and other cryptogams. In 182o he accepted the regius professorship of botany in Glas gow. The following year he brought out the Flora Scotica. In 1841 he was appointed director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, and under his direction the gardens expanded from II to 75 acres. He died on Aug. 12, 1865.
Hooker's most important works besides those mentioned above are: Exotic Flora (3 vols., 1822-27) ; Account of Sabine's Arctic Plants (1824) ; The Botanical Magazine (38 vols., 1827-65) ; Icones Filicum, in concert with Dr. R. K. Greville (2 vols., 1829-31) ; British Flora, undertaken with Dr. G. A. W. Arnott, etc. (1830) ; British Flora Cryptogamia (1833) ; Characters of Genera from the British Flora (1830) ; Flora Boreali-Americana (2 vols., 1840) ; The Journal of Botany (4 vols., 1830-42) • Companion to the Botanical Magazine (2 vols., 1835-36) ; Icones plantarum (so vols., 1837-54) ; the Botany of Beechey's Voyage to the Pacific and Behring's Straits (with Dr Arnott, 1840 ; the Genera Filicum (1 842) ; The London Journal of Botany (7 vols., ; Species filicum (5 vols., the standard work on this subject; A Century of Orchideae (1846) ; Journal of Botany and Kew Garden Miscellany (9 vols., Niger Flora (1849) ; Victoria Regia (1851) ; Museums of Economic Botany at Kew (1855) ; Filices exoticae ; The British Ferns (1861-62) ; A Century of Ferns (1854) ; A Second Century of Ferns (186o-61).
See Sir William Jackson Hooker, by his son J. D. Hooker (19o3).