Brown, Robert
NAME: Brown, Robert
ACHIEVEMENTS: Observed ‘Brownian Motion’: the continuous movement of minute suspended particles within pollen grains. He also collected nearly 4,000 different and previously unknown species of Australian plants.
NICKNAME/ALIAS:
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: December 21, 1773, Montrose, Scotland
DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH: June 10, 1858, London, England. Age 84
DISCIPLINE: Botanist
FIELD: Botany
LANGUAGE: English
PARENTS: James
SIBLINGS: none noted
SPOUSE: none mentioned
CHILDREN: none mentioned
EDUCATION: Marischal College, Aberdeen, Scotland; University of Edinburgh (Medical School), Scotland
MAJOR WORK:
LIFE AND TIMES: Robert Brown joined the Fifeshire Regiment of Fencibles as an Ensign and Surgeon’s Mate in 1795, shortly after graduating from the University of Edinburgh medical school. In October 1798 he as posted to London to recruit for the regiment. He was introduced to Banks*, who was planning a voyage of scientific discovery to New Holland, later re-named Australia.
Brown was made botanist for the voyage, and the “HMS Investigator” left London for Australia on July 18, 1801. The ship reached King George Sound, southwestern Australia on December 8. Throughout the four years of the voyage and despite the difficulties of preserving specimens on the “Investigator,” which was in poor condition and leaked badly, Brown collected nearly 4,000 different species of plants.
A large number of the plants, notes and drawings were lost when the replacement ship “HMS Porpoise” was wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef. The team returned to London in October 1805, and Brown was given a government salary for five years while he worked on cataloguing and examining the remaining 2,200 specimens. More than 1,700 of those species were previously unknown to science.
From 1806 to 1822, Brown served as Clerk, Librarian and Housekeeper to the Linnaean Society of London. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1810, and became a Fellow of the Linnaean Society in 1822, later serving as President of the Society from 1849 to 1853.
When Banks died in 1820, Brown inherited his house and botanical collections. The terms of the bequest required Brown to care for the collections during his lifetime, and leave them to the British Museum upon his death.
However, in 1827 Brown arranged for the transfer of the collections to the Museum on the condition that they become a permanent part of the Museum, and that he be made curator of the collections for life.
It was also in 1827 that Brown wrote a paper describing the continual movement of minute particles within the pollen grains of living plants. He was studying the fertilization of flowering plants, notably Clarkia pulchella (one of the evening primrose family) and observed the movement within the pollen grains.
He performed experiments to prove that the movement “arose neither from currents in the fluid, nor from its gradual evaporation, but belonged to the particle itself.” In addition to observing the phenomenon in living plants, he also examined preserved specimens, and noted the same movement: continual, random in direction, and with a force that is proportional to the size of the particles.
Rather than assuming this was a phenomenon restricted to organic and living things, Brown also considered non-organic specimens, including many rock samples. If the samples were reduced to a fine powder, suspended in water and observed through a microscope, they all exhibited the same motion.
The source of the motion was a mystery at the time, and scientists and physicists still debate the cause and nature of the movement, which became known as Brownian Motion* in Brown’s honor.
Among the acquaintances to whom Brown is likely to have demonstrated his findings were Sir Everard Home (who lost the Royal Society’s collection of Leeuwenhoek microscopes); Thomas Horsfield of Pennsylvania; Peter Mark Roget (of “Roget’s Thesaurus” fame); Wollaston*; and Charles Darwin*.
When Brown died on June 10, 1858, it was just one week before Darwin received Alfred Wallace’s paper on the “survival of the fittest” theory. Brown’s death led to the opportunity for Darwin to present his lecture on the theory of evolution to the Linnaean Society a short time later.
ASSESSMENT: The greatest botanist of his time, his work on botanic taxonomy was profoundly influential.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: Einstein*’s studies of Brownian Motion in 1905 led to the formation of the Boltzmann Constant.
He was visited by Asa Gray*
Schleiden* was influenced by Brown’s work with cell nuclei.
His work related to that of Schwann*
He described the great flower found by Raffles*
He corresponded with Alexander von Humboldt a great admirer.
He visited William Jackson Hooker*
ONELINER: Robert Brown, of ‘Brownian motion’
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Brian Ford, “Brownian Movement in Clarkia Pollen: A Reprise of the First Observations,” reprinted from The Microscope, Vol. 40, No. 4, pp. 235-241, 1992; online website www.sciences.demon.co.uk/webbrowna.htm
ROBERT BROWN & ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT
Sometime in early 1820s Humboldt gave Brown the title 'Botanicorum facile
princeps' and called him "the glory of Great Britain" - [sorry, can't find
where he said this anywhere, but did dedicate at least one of 23 vols of his
'Voyage de Humboldt et Bonpland aux régions équinoxiales du nouveau
continent, fait en 1799-1804', to Brown in 1823], but ironically enough as
early as 1808 Brown had taken a dim view of Humboldt's botanical work,
including latter's 'Essai sur la geographie des plants' - in particular,
H.'s "Idées sur la Physiognomie des Vegetaux" was deemed by RB a work that
"contains but little matter wrapt up in his usual declamatory nonsense".
However, AH greatly impressed by, among other works, RB's 'Prodromus florae
Novae Hollandiae' (1810) and 'General remarks geographical and systematical,
on the botany of Terra Australis' (1814, appendix to M. Flinders' 'A voyage
to Terra Australis', plus issued separately) - 70 yrs later Joseph Hooker
would describe latter work as one of RB's "most important contributions to
Botany, for the number, variety and suggestiveness of new facts,
observations, and generalizations it contains". In 'General remarks, RB
details the voyage, then the collections studied, and arranged the plants of
Terra Australis into 120 natural orders. He noted that of the Australian
flora as then known, 2900 species were dicotyledons, 800 monocotyledons, and
400 cryptograms, and tried to correlate these figures with climactic
conditions, noting that the proportion of dicotyledons decreases in higher
latitudes, and that the proportion of them in Australia should be higher
than it is (though offers not explanation of this). Plus notes that the
number of cryptogram species decreases proportionately twoards the tropics,
but in Australia they are very rare. This the first time that such stats
were brought together, and antedates AH's 'Prolegomena' (1817), in which AH
published 'Arithmeticae botanices' and extended investigation to families of
plants.
Brown met Humboldt more than once - both when he went to Paris in 1816, and
when Humboldt came to London in late 1817 with Francois Arago. At first
meeting, Brown gave him 2 copies of his 'General Remarks', including one for
de Jussieu, and later Brown drew up a list of answers to numerous
phytogeographical queries posed by Humboldt, including the distribution of
conifers, the flora of the Azores, ferns, tabashir etc, some of which were
used in Humboldt's 'Prolegomena' (1817).
Seems pair became increasingly friendly by correspondence, and met again in
1824, 1826 (in Paris) and 1833, when RB making tour of German botanical
gardens before attending meeting of German Association at Breslau. At
Berlin, he breakfasted with AH on 4 September, and then later same day pair
went together to meet the Duke of Cambridge (son of George III), the ruler
of Hanover and (like his brother, the Duke of Sussex) interested in science,
whom RB had met earlier at the theatre. With Humboldt, RB then left for
Breslau on 15 September, calling on the President and Secretary of the
Meeting of the German Association, and visiting the botanic garden. German
Assoc. meeting began on 18 September, where he met Jan Purkyne and other
cytologists, and at which he demonstrated 'Rafflesia' seeds under the
microscope. Meeting ended on 25 Sept and RB left for Dresden. Saw AH again
following year, when RB again visited Berlin in October 1836, and then in
Paris in August 1838.
For over 40 yrs Humboldt sought RB's advice on botanical matters, and he
proved himself a great devotee and friend. In 1842 AH signed Brown's diploma
of Chevalier de l'Ordre at Berlin, and the following yr wrote to PM Robert
Peel about possibility of pension for RB (who was still hard up) from the
Civil List - Peel wrote back to AH that he was pleased to give me £200 p.a.