H.Pearson
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Henry Harold Welch Pearson FRS FLS |
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| Born |
28 January 1870 Long Sutton, Lincolnshire |
| Died | 3 November 1916 (aged 46) Wynberg, Cape Town |
| Cause of death | pneumonia |
| Resting place | Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden |
| Alma mater | Christ's College, Cambridge |
| Awards |
Fellow of the Royal Society Fellow of the Linnean Society of London |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Botanist |
| Institutions | South African College |
| Author abbrev. (botany) | H.Pearson |
Henry Harold Welch Pearson (28 January 1870 in Long Sutton, Lincolnshire – 3 November 1916 in Wynberg, Cape Town), was a British-born South African botanist, chiefly remembered for founding Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in 1913.
Pearson started his career as a chemist's assistant, but changed his interests after attending a lecture on plants by A. C. Seward at Eastbourne in 1892. He taught for a while and was awarded a scholarship to Christ's College, Cambridge in 1896, obtaining a first class in the Natural Science Tripos.
Pearson published two papers in 1898, dealing with Bowenia spectabilis, a member of the Stangeriaceae from Australia. In the same year he explored the patanas (grassy uplands) in Ceylon for six months, having been awarded a Worts Travelling Scholars Fund. For this ecological dissertation he received the Walsingham Medal from Cambridge, the marine biologist Ernest William MacBride having been the first recipient in 1893. At Cambridge he was appointed Assistant Curator of the herbarium under Harry Marshall Ward. Here taxonomy engaged his interest and he received a Frank Smart Studentship. The following year found him at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew where he was Assistant for India. His interest in Verbenaceae led to his description of the family for Harvey & Sonder's Flora Capensis.
In 1903 Pearson became the first Harry Bolus Professor of Botany at the South African College. In 1904 he set off for South West Africa on the first of several expeditions with the object of studying the monotypic Welwitschia. This expedition was cut short by the first of the so-called Herero Wars. In 1907 he made a second attempt in the company of E. E. Galpin who had previously accompanied him on cycad-hunting trips to the Eastern Cape. His papers on the ecology, morphology and embryology of Welwitschia, led to a Cantabrigian DSc in 1907, which in turn led to a study of the closely related Gnetum, to which end he went on a collecting expedition to Angola in 1909. During this time he wrote an account of the Thymelaeaceae for the Flora of Tropical Africa.
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