Thomas Petch (born

Hornsea Hornsea is a seaside town and civil parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. The settlement dates to at least the early medieval period. The town was expanded in the Victorian era with the coming of the Hull and Hornsea Railway in 186 ...

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ) is an area of Northern England which was History of Yorkshire, historically a county. Despite no longer being used for administration, Yorkshire retains a strong regional identity. The county was named after its county town, the ...

, 11 March 1870; died

King's Lynn King's Lynn, known until 1537 as Bishop's Lynn and colloquially as Lynn, is a port and market town in the borough of King's Lynn and West Norfolk in the county of Norfolk, England. It is north-east of Peterborough, north-north-east of Cambridg ...

Norfolk Norfolk ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in England, located in East Anglia and officially part of the East of England region. It borders Lincolnshire and The Wash to the north-west, the North Sea to the north and eas ...

, 24 December 1948) was a prolific English

mycologist Mycology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungi, including their taxonomy, genetics, biochemical properties, and use by humans. Fungi can be a source of tinder, food, traditional medicine, as well as entheogens, poison, and ...

and

plant pathologist Plant pathology or phytopathology is the scientific study of plant diseases caused by pathogens (infectious organisms) and environmental conditions (physiological factors). Plant pathology involves the study of pathogen identification, disease ...

best remembered for his work on the interaction between

fungi A fungus (: fungi , , , or ; or funguses) is any member of the group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and mold (fungus), molds, as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as one ...

and

insect Insects (from Latin ') are Hexapoda, hexapod invertebrates of the class (biology), class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (Insect morphology#Head, head, ...

Biography

Petch was educated at the choir school of Holy Trinity at Hull, and taught at the King's Lynn Grammar School and Leyton Technical Institute while preparing for external degrees at the University of London. Petch had an early interest in natural history, but Charles Plowright, a doctor and mycologist in King's Lynn, encouraged him to study fungi. Through a friendship with George Massee of the Royal Botanical Gardens Petch was appointed Mycologist to the Government of Ceylon in 1905. He returned to England briefly to marry Edith Mary Plowright (b. 1875), Charles' daughter, in 1908. Petch held this position until 1924. After a leave to visit England, he returned to Ceylon as the founding director of the Tea Research Institute. In 1928 he retired to England, where he lived in North Wootton in the house formerly owned by his father-in-law, near King's Lynn. During his time in Ceylon, Petch studied the fungal diseases of rubber, cocoanut palm, tea, pepper, tobacco, and other crops grown there. He wrote ''The Diseases and Pests of the Rubber Tree'' (1921) and ''Diseases of the Tea Bush'' (1924), which were used for decades afterwards. He studied all the local fungi as well, and his life work, published posthumously in 1950, was his ''Fungi of Ceylon''. Petch became interested in fungi which lived with or on insects, starting in 1906 with a paper on fungi in termite nests. Between 1921 and 1944 he wrote 13 "Studies on entomogeneous fungi" and 7 "Notes on entomogeneous fungi", all except the first published in the ''Transactions'' of the

British Mycological Society The British Mycological Society is a learned society established in 1896 to promote the study of fungi. Formation The British Mycological Society (BMS) was formed by the combined efforts of two local societies: the Woolhope Naturalists' Fiel ...

(which Petch had served as president of in 1920). He also compiled a list of entomogeneous fungi in England (1932).

Family

Tom and Emily Petch had at least one son, Charles Plowright Petch (1909-1988), who became a surgeon like his grandfather, was also interested in mycology, and published a ''Flora of Norfolk'' of 1968.https://history.rcplondon.ac.uk/inspiring-physicians/charles-plowright-petch Royal College of Physicians biography of C. P. Petch

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Petch, Tom 1870 births 1948 deaths English mycologists British phytopathologists People from Hornsea

Biography

Family

See also

References

External links