David Prain

Sir David Prain CIE, M.D., FRS (11 July 1857 – 16 March 1944) was a Scottish physician and botanist.

Born to a saddler in Fettercairn, Scotland, in 1857, Prain attended the Fettercairn Parish School and the University of Aberdeen, where he gained his M.A. in 1878. After teaching for two years at Ramsgate College, he returned to Aberdeen and thence to the University of Edinburgh, earning his M.D. in 1883 with highest honours. He was demonstrator of anatomy at the College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1882 and 1883, and at the University of Aberdeen in 1883 and 1884.

In 1884 Prain was recommended to Sir George King (1840–1909), home on leave from his position as director of the Royal Botanic Garden at Calcutta and looking for a medical student with botanical interests to enter the Indian Medical Service. Prain duly went to India as a physician / botanist in the Indian Medical Service, and in 1887 was appointed curator of the Calcutta herbarium. In 1898 he was promoted director of the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta as well as the Botanical Survey of India, and superintendent of Cinchona Cultivation in Bengal, remaining there until 1905. From 1898 to 1905 he also served as Professor of Botany at the Medical College of Calcutta. In 1905 he became Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. He was appointed CIE in the 1906 Birthday Honours.

In May 1905, Prain was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1907 he was awarded an honorary doctorate of philosophy at the Linnaeus' tercentenary in Uppsala, Sweden, and became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1912. He was also knighted in 1912. He served as president of the Linnean Society from 1916 to 1919, president of the Association of Applied Biologists from 1920 to 1921 and president of the Quekett Microscopical Club from 1924 to 1926. He was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal of the Royal Horticultural Society in 1925 and the Linnean Medal in 1935.

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