Arthur george tansley biography examples

1871

Born 15 August, 33 Regent Square, London, to George and Amelia (née Lawrence).

To this day, and unusually, the journal remains ‘broad spectrum’. The New Phytologist was to be THE forum for botanists.

Tansley almost called his offspring the British Botanical Journal but, following the suggestion of Francis Wall Oliver (Professor at UCL, and his immediate superior), settled on a more memorable name, The New Phytologist, after the magazine-style Phytologist that had enjoyed a short life between 1842–1863.

Although ecology was especially well represented – at least until the Journal of Ecology was launched in 1913 – Tansley was adamant that in its pages The New Phytologist should include all aspects of botany.

Tansley – the founding figure of British ecology

By John Sheail, NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford, UK.

John has written a history of the British Ecological Society and several books on the history of conservation and the environment movement.

Tansley’s career encompassed the late-nineteenth century emergence of British ecology, its long, hesitant development, and ecology’s eventual recognition through the establishment of the Nature Conservancy in 1949, an ecological research council of which Tansley was founder-chairman.

Beyond his strictly scientific activities he played active roles in educating students and the masses as to the importance of botany and ecology, and was a persistent champion of conservation efforts. The Manifesto successfully persuaded a generation of younger men and women to modernise the botany they taught in British universities.

The Phytologist: A Botanical Journal. Front cover of the journal as published in June, 1842.

At the end of 1931, Tansley passed on the editorship of his flourishing journal to three good friends and distinguished younger botanists: Roy Clapham, Harry Godwin and Will James.

Conscious of how he was neither a taxonomist nor experimentalist, Tansley brought rather a continuing preoccupation with philosophy and processes of thought in that emergent natural-science. A study of the vascular system of Matonia pectinata. Nature 150: 104–110. Flahault C, Juel O, Schröter C, Tansley AG.

1924. It comprised the nine most active surveyors and was under Tansley’s chairmanship. A brief history of New Phytologist. In: Report of the 91st meeting of the British Association, Liverpool, 1923. Arthur Tansley is the 413th most popular biologist (down from 363rd in 2024), the 2,114th most popular biography from United Kingdom (down from 1,918th in 2019) and the 65th most popular British Biologist.

Among biologists, Arthur Tansley ranks 413 out of 1,097.

Its additional powers to provide expert advice, to acquire and manage national nature reserves, and to undertake the research relevant to those executive responsibilities, were conferred by the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949¹³⁷.