sketcher and botanist, was born in England on 30 June 1817, son of the eminent botanist Sir William Jackson Hooker and Maria, née Turner. After studying classics and medicine at Glasgow University, Joseph was appointed naturalist and assistant surgeon to the Erebus , one of the two ships on (Sir) James Clark Ross’s expedition to the Antarctic. Robert McCormick in the Terror was chief surgeon to the expedition. The voyage lasted from 1839 to 1843 and Hooker visited Van Diemen’s Land on two occasions, from August to October 1840 and from March to May 1841. Port Jackson (Sydney) was visited briefly. As there was no professional draughtsman with the expedition (the second officer J.E. Davis was the major artist on board) Hooker drew and painted landscapes and natural history illustrations: animals, plants and fish. Even so, the three books on the botany of the Antarctic, New Zealand and Tasmania that Hooker published in the 1840s and 1850s were illustrated by Walter Hood Fitch, an English botanical artist, not by Hooker himself. His sketches were very probably used, however, together with the specimens he had collected.
After a career of exploring in India and Tibet, the Middle East and North America, as well as serving as assistant director, then director, of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, Sir Joseph Hooker retired in 1885. He died on 10 December 1911, having married twice and fathered nine children.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
