Edward James Salisbury, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Edward James Salisbury

British botanist, ecologist, university lecturer and director of Kew gardens

Date of Birth: 16-Apr-1886

Place of Birth: Harpenden, England, United Kingdom

Date of Death: 10-Nov-1978

Profession: director, university teacher, botanical collector, botanist

Nationality: United Kingdom

Zodiac Sign: Aries

Sir Edward James Salisbury CBE FRS (16 April 1886 – 10 November 1978) was an English botanist and ecologist.
He was born in Harpenden, Hertfordshire and graduated in botany from University College London in 1905.
In 1913, he obtained a D.Sc.
with a thesis on fossil seeds and was appointed a senior lecturer at East London College.
He returned to University College London as a senior lecturer, from 1924 as a reader in plant ecology and from 1929 as Quain Professor of botany. He was director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew from 1943 to 1956.
He was responsible for the restoration of the gardens after the Second World War. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 15 March 1933 and won the society's Royal Medal in 1945 for "his notable contributions to plant ecology and to the study of the British flora generally".
In 1936, he was awarded The Veitch Memorial Medal of the Royal Horticultural Society in acknowledgement of his book The Living Garden (1935), which was enormously popular.
In 1939, he received the Commander of the Order of the British Empire and in 1946 he was knighted. At first, his research was focussed on forest ecology, particularly in his native Hertfordshire.
Later, he pioneered investigations of seed size and reproductive output of plants in relation to habitat.
He also investigated the ecology of garden weeds and of dune plants. He was elected President of the Sussex Wildlife Trust in January 1962, where he remained in office until April 1967.