Robert Brown Facts
Robert Brown Facts
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| Interesting Robert Brown Facts: |
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| Robert Brown was born in Montrose, Scotland where his father, James, was a Scottish Episcopal minister. |
| After attending Marischal College in Aberdeen, he entered the University of Edinburgh to study medicine. |
| He changed to the study of botany and made botanical expeditions into the Scottish highlands. |
| He kept meticulous records of plants and began collecting specimens for the famous British botanist, William Withering. |
| Brown discovered a new species of grass, Alopecurus alpinus. |
| In 1792 he read his first paper, "The botanical history of Angus" to the Edinburgh Natural History Society. |
| In 1794 he enlisted in the Fifeshire Fencibles and was sent to Ireland as a Surgeon's Mate. |
| Even while in the army, he established his reputation as a botanist and corresponded with many famous botanists of his day. |
| He was nominated to the Linnean Society of London and was acknowledged in the works of many botanists. |
| A species of algae, Conferva brownii was named for him by Lewis Weston Dillwyn. |
| In December 1800 he accepted a position as naturalist on an expedition to Australia but the expedition didn't leave England until July of 1801. |
| Brown prepared for the trip by studying what had been written on Australian plants. |
| The expedition included the famous botanical illustrator, Ferdinand Bauer and a gardener named Peter Good. |
| Brown, Good and Bauer collected many specimens including two new species of Serruria. |
| Brown worked in Australia for three and a half years and collected over 2000 previously unknown species of plants. |
| In May 1805 he returned to England and began to publish scientific papers on his study of the Australian flora. |
| In 1810 he published the first systematic description of Australian flora in his famous Prodromus Florae Novae hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen. |
| In 1810 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. |
| By studying pollen grains under a microscope he discovered that their characteristics indicated they family of plant from which they originated. |
| He proposed that pollen type was one of the elements of plant classification. |
| In 1827 he used microscopy to discover that grains of pollen in water exhibited a continuous oscillating motion. |
| In 1828 he published his observations in a pamphlet titled, A Brief Account of Microscopical Observation and the effect still bears the name, Brownian Movement. |
| He documented the fundamental difference between gymnosperms and angiosperms. |
| In 1831 he noticed the cell nucleus while experimenting with fertilization in Orchidaceae and Asclepiadaceae. |
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