Thomas Gaskell Tutin,
FRS (21 April 1908 – 7 October 1987) was Professor of Botany at the
University of Leicester
The University of Leicester ( ) is a public university, public research university based in Leicester, England. The main campus is south of the city centre, adjacent to Victoria Park, Leicester, Victoria Park. The university's predecessor, Univ ...
and co-author of ''Flora of the British Isles'' and ''
Flora Europaea
The ''Flora Europaea'' is a 5-volume encyclopedia of plants, published between 1964 and 1993 by Cambridge University Press. The aim was to describe all the national Floras of Europe in a single, authoritative publication to help readers identify ...
''.
Early life
Tutin was born on 21 April 1908 in
Kew
Kew () is a district in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. Its population at the 2011 census was 11,436. Kew is the location of the Royal Botanic Gardens ("Kew Gardens"), now a World Heritage Site, which includes Kew Palace. Kew is ...
, Surrey, son of Frank Tutin, a biochemist at the
Lister Institute
The Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, informally known as the Lister Institute, was established as a research institute (the British Institute of Preventive Medicine) in 1891, with bacteriologist Marc Armand Ruffer as its first director, ...
, and his wife, Jane Ardern. He was educated at
Cotham Grammar School, Bristol, then won a scholarship to
Downing College, Cambridge
Downing College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge and currently has around 950 students. Founded in 1800, it was the only college to be added to the university between 1596 and 1869, and is often described as the oldest of ...
, where he studied
Biological Sciences
Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, and distribution of ...
. In 1929, while still an undergraduate, he went on a botanical expedition to
Madeira
Madeira ( ; ), officially the Autonomous Region of Madeira (), is an autonomous Regions of Portugal, autonomous region of Portugal. It is an archipelago situated in the North Atlantic Ocean, in the region of Macaronesia, just under north of ...
and the
Azores
The Azores ( , , ; , ), officially the Autonomous Region of the Azores (), is one of the two autonomous regions of Portugal (along with Madeira). It is an archipelago composed of nine volcanic islands in the Macaronesia region of the North Atl ...
, afterwards publishing two papers on the results of his studies there.
[Jstor Plant Science: Tutin, Thomas Gaskell (1908-1987)]
/ref>
After graduating in 1930 he stayed in Cambridge, interrupted by biological expeditions in 1931 to southern Spain
Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...
and Spanish Morocco
The Spanish protectorate in Morocco was established on 27 November 1912 by a treaty between France and Spain that converted the Spanish sphere of influence in Morocco into a formal protectorate.
The Spanish protectorate consisted of a norther ...
, and in 1933 to British Guiana
British Guiana was a British colony, part of the mainland British West Indies. It was located on the northern coast of South America. Since 1966 it has been known as the independent nation of Guyana.
The first known Europeans to encounter Guia ...
, where the expedition was based on the banks of the Essequibo River
The Essequibo River (; originally called by Alonso de Ojeda; ) is the largest river in Guyana, and the largest river between the Orinoco and Amazon River, Amazon. Rising in the Acarai Mountains near the Brazil–Guyana border, the Essequibo flows ...
. After that trip he moved to Plymouth
Plymouth ( ) is a port city status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority in Devon, South West England. It is located on Devon's south coast between the rivers River Plym, Plym and River Tamar, Tamar, about southwest of Exeter and ...
to work in the laboratory of the Marine Biological Association
The Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom (MBA) is a learned society with a scientific laboratory that undertakes research in marine biology. The organisation was founded in 1884 and has been based in Plymouth since the Citadel Hil ...
, researching a disease of eel grass Eelgrass is a common name for several plants and may refer to:
* ''Zostera'', marine eelgrass
* ''Vallisneria
''Vallisneria'' (named in honor of Antonio Vallisneri) is a genus of freshwater aquatic plant, commonly called eelgrass, tape grass or ...
. In 1937 he joined the Percy Sladen Trust expedition to Lake Titicaca
Lake Titicaca (; ; ) is a large freshwater lake in the Andes mountains on the border of Bolivia and Peru. It is often called the highest navigable lake in the world. Titicaca is the largest lake in South America, both in terms of the volume of ...
, resulting in a significant publication on the development and stability of lake plant communities
After a short period as a demonstrator at King's College London
King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...
, he became an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester
The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...
. There, in addition to teaching and fire-watching duties occasioned by the War
War is an armed conflict between the armed forces of states, or between governmental forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations, or between such organi ...
, he developed his interests in lake algae begun during the Titicaca expedition. This led to visits to the research station of the Freshwater Biological Association
The Freshwater Biological Association (FBA) is an independent scientific organisation founded in 1929 in Cumbria by Felix Eugen Fritsch, William Harold Pearsall, Francis Balfour-Browne, and Robert Gurney among others. Whilst originally created to ...
near Windermere
Windermere (historically Winder Mere) is a ribbon lake in Cumbria, England, and part of the Lake District. It is the largest lake in England by length, area, and volume, but considerably smaller than the List of lakes and lochs of the United Ki ...
, where he met his future wife. In early 1942 Tutin joined the geographical section of the Admiralty's Naval Intelligence Division in Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...
, which was producing a series of geographical handbooks for military use. Tutin's part in this was to survey the fenlands
The Fens or Fenlands in eastern England are a naturally marshy region supporting a rich ecology and numerous species. Most of the fens were drained centuries ago, resulting in a flat, dry, low-lying agricultural region supported by a system o ...
of the north of England for buckthorn
''Rhamnus'' is a genus of about 140 accepted species of shrubs or small trees, commonly known as buckthorns, in the family Rhamnaceae. Its species range from tall (rarely to ) and are native mainly in east Asia and North America, but found thr ...
, whose charcoal was used in certain shell fuses.[
]
Leicester
In 1944 Tutin was appointed lecturer in charge of the department of botany at University College, Leicester, and in 1947 he became the first professor of botany there. The College became the University of Leicester
The University of Leicester ( ) is a public university, public research university based in Leicester, England. The main campus is south of the city centre, adjacent to Victoria Park, Leicester, Victoria Park. The university's predecessor, Univ ...
in 1957. Apart from his teaching and administrative duties, Tutin's interest now turned to taxonomy
image:Hierarchical clustering diagram.png, 280px, Generalized scheme of taxonomy
Taxonomy is a practice and science concerned with classification or categorization. Typically, there are two parts to it: the development of an underlying scheme o ...
. Sir Arthur Tansley
Sir Arthur George Tansley FLS, FRS (15 August 1871 – 25 November 1955) was an English botanist and a pioneer in the science of ecology.
Educated at Highgate School, University College London and Trinity College, Cambridge, Tansley taught ...
had drawn his attention to the need for a new British flora, and Tutin began a collaboration with Arthur Roy Clapham
Arthur Roy Clapham (24 May 1904 – 18 December 1990), was a British botanist. Born in Norwich and educated at Downing College, Cambridge, Clapham worked at Rothamsted Experimental Station as a crop physiologist (1928–30), and then took a tea ...
and E. F. Warburg, to write the 1591-page ''Flora of the British Isles'', published in 1952, which quickly came to be regarded as the standard work on the subject.[ A briefer ''Excursion Flora'' from the same authors was equally successful. Emboldened by this success, Tutin's ambitions turned to wider geographical areas. At the eighth ]International Botanical Congress
International Botanical Congress (IBC) is an international meeting of Botany, botanists in all scientific fields, authorized by the International Association of Botanical and Mycological Societies (IABMS) and held every six years, with the locatio ...
, in Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
in 1954, the need for a flora of Europe was identified, and a group of British botanists formed an editorial committee, with Tutin as chairman, which spent the next twenty and more years in collating and publishing the massive ''Flora Europaea
The ''Flora Europaea'' is a 5-volume encyclopedia of plants, published between 1964 and 1993 by Cambridge University Press. The aim was to describe all the national Floras of Europe in a single, authoritative publication to help readers identify ...
''.
He was President of the Botanical Society of the British Isles
The Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI) is a scientific society for the study of flora, plant distribution and taxonomy relating to Great Britain, Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. The society was founded as the Botani ...
from 1957 to 1961. He retired from his professorship at the age of 65 in 1973, but continued to be active in Flora Europaea and other work.
In 1977 he was awarded the Gold Medal
A gold medal is a medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture.
Since the eighteenth century, gold medals have b ...
of the Linnean Society of London
The Linnean Society of London is a learned society dedicated to the study and dissemination of information concerning natural history, evolution, and Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy. It possesses several important biological specimen, manuscript a ...
. The University of Dublin
The University of Dublin (), corporately named as The Chancellor, Doctors and Masters of the University of Dublin, is a research university located in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. It is the degree-awarding body for Trinity College Dublin, whi ...
awarded him an honorary ScD degree in 1979 (his first and only doctorate).[ In 1982 he was elected a ]Fellow of the Royal Society
Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...
.[list of Fellows of Royal Society]
/ref>
Family
In 1942 he married a palaeoecologist, Winifred Pennington (1915–2007). They had a son and three daughters. Tutin died in Leicester on 7 October 1987.[
]
References
Bibliography
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tutin, Tom
English botanists
1908 births
1987 deaths
Fellows of the Royal Society
Academics of the University of Leicester
20th-century British botanists
Presidents of the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland