HOOKER, Six Joseph Dalton, English rl su eon and botanist: b. Halesworth, Suffolk, 30 June 1817; d. aged 94, Sunnydale, 10 Dec. 1911 His father was Sir William Jackson Hooker, regius professor of botany at Glas gow University, and his mother the daughter of a banker, Dawson Turner, of Great Yarmouth. Educated at the High School and University of Glasgow, he took his M.D. degree in 1839. He was only 21 when he accompanied the famous expedition of Sir James Clark Ross in the Erebus and Terror, sent out by the government to investigate the phenomena of terrestrial magnetism in the south circumpolar seas. His official or nominal position was that of assist ant-surgeon, but in reality he was the naturalist of the expedition. His researches during this voyage resulted in a series of priceless volumes on the botany of the southern regions, embrac ing the Antarctic Islands, New Zealand, Tas mania and Fuegia. He succeeded in extending our knowledge of the laws governing the dis tribution of plants by comparing those he found with the flora of other parts of the world.
Returning home after four years he became botanist to the Geological Survey of Great Britain in 1846, and in 1847 went to India to study the flora of a hitherto unknown region of the Himalayas. Returning in 1851 he pub lished two volumes of 'Himalayan Journals' and other botanical works on India. In 1855 Hooker was appointed assistant director of Kew Gardens under his father, succeeding on the death of the latter to the directorship in 1865, and resigned in 1885. In 1868 he was president of the British Association, and presi dent of the Royal Society 1872-78. He visited Syria and Palestine for botanical study in 1860; the Atlas Mountains in 1871, and the Rockies in 1877. On his return he presented to the Royal Botanical Gardens (Kew) a large collection of seeds and museum specimens, and a herbarium of some thousand species, together with a mass of notes on the distribution of North American trees. He was the recipient
of many, honors and medals for his eminent services in scientific geography by promoting an accurate knowledge of the floras and economic vegetable products of the colonies and dependencies of the British Empire. In 1907 King Edward conferred the rare distinc tion of the Order of Merit upon him. Hooker was twice married (in 1851 and 1876), and left six sons and two daughters. A list of his writings forms almost a botanical catalogue, for he wrote thousands of monographs in ad dition to his larger works. The great 'Index Kewensis> (Oxford 1893-94) was compiled under Hooker's direction at the request and expense of Darwin (d. 1882).
HOOKER, theologian: b. Heavitree, near Exeter, March 1554; d. Bishops bourne, 2 Nov. 1600. He was educated at Ox ford. In 1581 he took orders, and was shortly after made preacher at Saint Paul's Cross, in London. In 1584 he became rector of Drayton Beauchamp, Buckinghamshire. The following year he was appointed by Archbishop Whitgift Master of the Temple for life. Here lie ,be came engaged in a controversy with his col-, league, Walter Travers, whose sympathies Were strongly Puritanical, and to this controversy we owe his celebrated work Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.' The first four books were printed in 1594. The fifth book his great work appeared in 1597; the last three in 1600. The Ecclesiastical Polity,' written in defense of the Church of England, is no less remarkable for learning and extent of research than for the richness and purity of its style, which entitles its author to be regarded as one of the classics of the Elizabethan Age. Consult Lives by Walton and Keble.