William Turner Thiselton-Dyer

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Sir William Turner Thiselton-Dyer FLS FRS KCMG (July 28, 1843–December 23, 1928) was a British botanist.

Thiselton-Dyer was born in Westminster, London. Initially studying mathematics at Oxford University, he graduated in natural science in 1867. He became Professor of Natural History at the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester and then Professor of Botany at the Royal College of Science for Ireland in Dublin. In 1872, he became professor at the Royal Horticultural Society in London, being recommended by Joseph Hooker.

Then in 1875, Thiselton-Dyer was offered the Assistant Directorship at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, under Hooker, where he was to stay for thirty years. Thiselton-Dyer spent considerable time on the Colonies, e.g. introducing rubber to plantations of Sri Lanka and Malaya, and the introduction of cacao from Trinidad to plantations in Sri Lanka. In 1877, he was given charge of an international research laboratory, established at Kew with private funding, which became known as one of the best laboratories in Europe. Thiselton-Dyer was also given the task of designing a new rock garden, following a bequest to Kew in 1881 of a large collection of Alpine plants.

Thiselton-Dyer was elected FRS in 1880. His proposers included Charles Darwin and George Bentham, but not J.D. Hooker, whose daughter Dyer had already married.

From 1885 to 1905, after the retirement of Hooker, he was director of the Royal Botanic Gardens. He was a fellow of the University of London from 1887 to 1890, Royal Commissioner to the Paris International Exhibition (1900) and to the St. Louis Exposition (1904), botanical adviser to the Secretary of State for the Colonies (1902-1906), and became a member of the court of the University of Bristol in 1909. His principal works are an English edition of Sachs Text-Book of Botany (1875), editions of the Flora Capensis and of the Flora of Tropical Africa, and Index Kewensis (1905).^[1] With Trimen he published The Flora of Middlesex (1869).

He married Harriet Anne Hooker, daughter of the botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker in 1877 and they had one son and one daughter. He was awarded the Clarke Medal by the Royal Society of New South Wales in 1892. He was appointed KCMG in 1899. He died in Whitcombe.