Brown, Robert

BROWN, ROBERT. - Botanist, b. at Montrose in Scotland in 1773, d. in London in 1858, son of a Protestant bishop. He attended Rutherford's lectures in Edinburgh. He was appointed assistant surgeon in a garrison regiment in the north of Ireland, where he remained until the end of the year 1800, also devoting himself to botanical studies. Around this time he met Joseph Banks (b. in 1743, d. in 1820), another illustrious English naturalist, who had taken part in various voyages, including that of Cook's first expedition around the world (1768-71), from which he had brought back notable collections. B. through Banks's good offices was sent in 1802 with an English expedition to explore the coasts of Australia. There he examined the flora of New Wales, of Tasmania, of the islands of the Bass district, etc., and in 1805 he returned to England with a collection of 4000 species of plants.

Immediately afterwards he was appointed librarian of the Linnean Society. He gave an account of his observations in the Pradromus florae Novae Hollandiae (1810), in the General remarks geographical and systematical on the botany of Terra australis (1814), in the Supplementum primum florae Novae Hollandiae. He also described the plants collected in Java by Horsefield, in Abyssinia by Slate, the collections gathered by Houdney, by Clapperton, by Captain Takey, and finally those of Ross, of Parry and of Richardson, explorers of the Arctic regions. He further published numerous memoirs on pollen and on the fertilization of orchids and asclepiads, on the fertilization and on the development of the pollen and ovules of conifers and cycads, on floral morphology and on other subjects of anatomy and physiology. He discovered the nucleus in plant cells; in 1827 he observed for the first time under the microscope that characteristic movement of a purely physical nature, which was later named Brownian movement in his honor. We can observe this movement under the ultramicroscope in a colloidal solution, and it is due to the mutual impact of the molecules of the dispersoid on those of the dispersed part, but also, under the microscope, on larger particles.

B. was appointed a member of the Royal Society of London in 1811. He came into possession of Banks's library and herbarium in 1823. He donated the plant collection to the British Museum, which in 1827 appointed him director of the botanical section. In 1832 he received the title of doctor from the University of Oxford, and in the following year he became a member of the Academy of Sciences of Paris.

Humboldt rightly named him "Prince of botanists."

Giuseppina Dragone-Testi