Robert Brown (botanist)

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Robert Brown (1773–1858)

Robert Brown (December 21, 1773–June 10, 1858) is acknowledged as the leading British botanist to collect in Australia during the first half of the 19th century.

Brown was born in Montrose, Scotland on 21 December 1773. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where he was a classmate of Thomas Dick. He joined the army as a surgeon in 1795. In December 1800 he accepted an offer of the position of naturalist on board the The Investigator under Matthew Flinders, which was about to depart on its historic voyage to chart the coast of Australia. The Investigator arrived in King George Sound in what is now Western Australia in December 1801. For three and a half years Brown did intensive botanic research in Australia, collecting about 3400 species, of which about 2000 were previously unknown. A large part of this collection was lost, however, when the Porpoise was wrecked en route to England.

Brown remained in Australia until May 1805. He then returned to England where he spent the next five years working on the material he had gathered. He published numerous species descriptions; in Western Australia alone he is the author of nearly 1200 species. In 1810, he published the results of his collecting in his famous Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen, the first systematic account of the Australian flora. That year, he succeeded Jonas C. Dryander as Sir Joseph Banks' librarian, and on Banks' death in 1820 inherited his library and herbarium. This was transferred to the British Museum in 1827, and Brown was appointed Keeper of the Banksian Botanical Collection.

In 1827, while examining pollen grains and the spores of mosses and Equisetum suspended in water under a microscope, Brown observed minute particles within vacuoles in the pollen grains executing a continuous jittery motion. He then observed the same motion in particles of dust, enabling him to rule out the hypothesis that the motion was due to pollen being alive. Although he himself did not provide a theory to explain the motion, the phenomenon is now known as Brownian motion in his honour. In a paper dated 1828, Brown named the cell nucleus. The nucleus had been observed before, first by the Dutch microscopist Leeuwenhoek, but it was Brown who first noted its ubiquitous occurrence and gave it the name it bears to this day.

In recent years it was generally held that Brown's microscopes were insufficient to reveal phenomena of this order, or to resolve the nucleus. Brown's discoveries were denied in a brief paper in Scientific American vol 265 p 20 (1991) entitled "Did Robert Brown observe Brownian Motion: probably not". Shortly thereafter, in a hastily-compiled illustrated presentation, British microscopist Brian J. Ford presented to Inter Micro 1991 in Chicago a reprise of the demonstration. His video sequences substantiated the observations of Brown and were subsequently published in The Microscope vol 39 pp 161-171 (1991).

After the division of the Natural History Department of the British Museum into three sections in 1837, Robert Brown became the first Keeper of the Botanical Department, remaining so until his death at Soho Square in London on June 10, 1858. He was succeeded by John Joseph Bennett.

Brown is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in London.

Brown's name is commemorated in the Australia herb genus Brunonia, as well as numerous Australian species such as Eucalyptus brownii.

The standard author abbreviation R.Br. may be used to indicate this person in citing a botanical name.