Alexander Dickson (botanist)


Prof Alexander Dickson FRSE LLD was a Scottish morphological botanist and botanical artist.
His family had previously had members in the legal and medical professions; one of the earliest of whom any special records exist having been John Dickson of Kilbucho and Hartree, a lawyer, who in 1649 was appointed a Senator of the College of Justice, taking the title of Lord Hartree.

Early life

He was born at 6 Fettes Row in Edinburgh on 21 February 1836 the son of Jemima Pyper, daughter of the Rev David Pyper, and David Dickson of Hartree, an advocate, and descendant of John Dickson, Lord Hartree.
Dickson received his early education at home. In 1855, he entered the University of Edinburgh as a student of medicine; and soon engaged with enthusiasm in those preliminary scientific studies which have so frequently been the occasion of the first awakenings of latent scientific impulses. In him they appear to have served this purpose. He became an enthusiastic biologist; and a warm admirer and disciple of Goodsir, in whose philosophical tendencies he found, like many of his friends, the inspiring direction that soon became so marked and characteristic a feature of his scientific work and aims. Engrossed in natural science, he took, it would seem, comparatively little interest in the purely professional or technical departments of the medical curriculum. He, however, appreciated differentiation as a means of promoting advancement in the art as well as in the science of medicine. In his inaugural address, delivered in 1859, as a President of the Royal Medical Society, he supposes the questions,
Dickson graduated as doctor of medicine in August 1860 with his thesis on 'On the development of the flower, and especially the pistil in the caryophyllaceae', having previously, in accordance with his biological proclivities, studied under Albert von Kölliker in Würzburg and Rudolf Virchow in Berlin. His career as a teacher of botany began in the summer of 1862, when he conducted the class of botany in the University of Aberdeen for Professor George Dickie, who was at the time incapacitated by bad health. He thus found an opportunity for displaying his merits as a teacher; and his success proved of much value in securing for him in 1866 the chair of Botany in the University of Dublin. Two years afterwards he was appointed Professor of Botany in the University of Glasgow, where he confirmed his early reputation as a clear and painstaking teacher and an enthusiastic worker in structural and morphological botany.

Career as botanist

Dr Dickson remained in Glasgow from 1866 till 1879. In the latter year, the professorship of botany in the University of Edinburgh became vacant, on the resignation, caused by failing health, of the renowned and veteran Professor John Hutton Balfour; and to this great botanical position, Dr Dickson was promoted by the Curators. In the following year, he received from the Crown also the appointment of Regius Professor of Botany to the University of Edinburgh, as well as that of the 8th Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden, a position he held until 1887. During this time he lived at 11 Royal Circus in the New Town.
It is with his work as a professor in Edinburgh that the members of this Society are most familiar. The recollection of that work is still so vividly present among us, that, but for the requirement of a historical record, it would be needless to dwell on it. We find him entering on his duties imbued with the same conception of the far-reaching affinities between science and art or practice as was recognised in the early developments of his biological career. In his inaugural address he adopted for his subject the consideration of some remarkable parallels between the animal and vegetable kingdoms as regards specialisation of form for the performance of different functions. For this purpose he compared a flowering plant with a zoophyte, and showed how unity of organisation is manifest throughout nature. The same lesson was indicated as, 20 years before, he had taught in his inaugural address to the Royal Medical Society, that the cultivation of every department of biological science increases the knowledge'of that human anatomy which is the foundation of the art of medicine and surgery.
His relations with the students of the university soon became of the most cordial description. His painstaking earnestness as a teacher, his obvious desire to further their botanical studies, the knowledge that soon spread of the hours spent in preparation for his class, and especially in the preparation of the wonderfully skilful and instructive illustrations that from day to day appeared on the blackboard, and the numberless evidences of his courteous and generous disposition, gained for him, not only respect, but also warm and grateful affection.
Professor Dickson's first botanical paper was published in 1857, while he was yet a student of medicine. During the following 29 years his activity as a worker was shown by the publication of upwards of 50 papers. Many of them rank as masterpieces of accurate and elaborate description, and of philosophical conceptions of structure. A glance over the appended list shows his great partiality for subjects bearing on development and morphology, in which departments of botany he acquired the position of an eminent authority. In confirmation of these statements, it is sufficient to cite his graduation thesis, for which he was bestowed a gold medal, " On the Development of the Flower, and especially the Pistil, in the Caryophyllocece," and his papers on the Morphology of the Reproductive Organs of the Ooniferce, on the Embryo and its Appendages in Tropceolum, on the Embryology and Development of the Flower of Pinguicula, on the Spiral Arrangements of the Cones of Pinus pinaster, and on the Morphology and Structure of the Pitchers in Cephalotus and Nepenthes.
On account of his eminence as a botanist and teacher, he was made honorary MD of the University of Dublin, LLD of the University of Glasgow, Fellow of the Linnaean Society, and President of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh.
Dickson took much interest in matters outside of his immediate professorial duties and scientific pursuits. He was a Conservative in State and Church politics. On various occasions he actively supported candidates for parliamentary representation. A consistent Free Churchman, he remained true to the original position of that Church, and opposed publicly the policy which an influential majority had adopted, of reversing its traditions on the question of a State-recognised and supported Church. He strenuously opposed the legislative attempts, which fortunately proved abortive, to modify the special characters of medical education and graduation in the Scottish universities, for the mere sake of bringing them into harmony with the systems prevailing in the southern division of the United Kingdom. He looked with much distrust on the schemes, embodied in the various Bills introduced into Parliament during the last seven years, for effecting fundamental changes in the constitution and character of the Scottish universities; considering them prompted more by political, social, and selfish aims, than by a real and disinterested desire for educational reform. If it were possible for one so charitable and generous to entertain any feeling of resentment, that feeling was approached in the indignation with which he regarded many of the statements of the extreme section of agitators for university legislation. Even when he found himself in a hopeless minority,—as occasionally happened in the discussions on this question,—few men could be more courageous in maintaining or expressing the views he had deliberately adopted.
Polemical discussion, however, was not congenial to his fair and candid disposition. When not engaged in teaching or in the botanical investigations to which he was so ardently attached, his occupations as proprietor of Hartree and Kilbucho, and social intercourse with his friends, were more in accordance with his tastes.
It has been well said that, as a country laird, "his one aim in life was to make others happy." And the same characteristics made him also a general favourite in society; where he used to delight his friends by the exquisite taste and feeling with which he played on the piano the works of Beethoven and Bach, and the national airs of Scotland.

Death

He was aware that he was suffering from an illness, but concealed all knowledge of the existence of this "thorn in the flesh," to avoid causing anxiety and pain to those around. He succeeded in his purpose; and when, on 30 December 1887, he suddenly expired on the curling pond, at Thriepland Pond, Hartree, Peeblesshire, no forebodings or anxieties had occurred to increase the bitter grief of his departure.
He was warmly he was attached to the Botanical Society of Edinburgh. He constantly attended its meetings, served it as President and in some of its other offices, and communicated to it the greater number of his botanical papers.

Memorials

A bust of Dickson, sculpted by Charles McBride in 1889, is held in the art collection of the University of Edinburgh.

Artistic recognition

His sketch portrait of 1884, by William Brassey Hole, is held by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

Chronological list of scientific papers