Sir Francis Darwin | |
---|---|
Born | 16 August 1848 Down House, Downe, Kent |
Died | 19 September 1925 (aged 77) Cambridge |
Nationality | British |
Known for | Phototropism |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Botany |
Influences | Charles Darwin |
Sir Francis "Frank" Darwin, FLS FRS,FRSE LLD (16 August 1848 – 19 September 1925), was a son of the British naturalist and scientist Charles Darwin. He, like his father, was a botanist. He was a brother of George Howard Darwin, Horace Darwin, and Leonard Darwin.
Francis Darwin was born in Down House, Downe, Kent in 1848. He was the third son and seventh child of Charles Darwin and his wife Emma Wedgwood. He was educated at Clapham Grammar School.
He then went to Trinity College, Cambridge, first studying mathematics, then changing to natural sciences, graduating in 1870. He then went to study medicine at St George's Medical School, London, earning an MB in 1875, but did not practice medicine.
Darwin was married three times and widowed twice. First he married Amy Richenda Ruck in 1874, but she died in 1876 four days after the birth of their son Bernard Darwin, who was later to become a golf writer. In September 1883 he married Ellen Wordsworth Crofts (1856 - 1903) and they had a daughter Frances Crofts Darwin (1886–1960), a poet who married the poet Francis Cornford and became known under her married name. His third wife was Florence Henrietta Fisher, daughter of Herbert William Fisher and widow of Frederic William Maitland, whom he married in 1913, the year in which he was knighted. Her sister Adeline Fisher was the first wife of Darwin's double first cousin once removed Ralph Vaughan Williams.