37 Facts About Agnes Arber

Agnes Arber FRS was a British plant morphologist and anatomist, historian of botany and philosopher of biology.

Agnes Arber was born in London but lived most of her life in Cambridge, including the last 51 years of her life.

Agnes Arber was the first woman botanist to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society and the third woman overall.

Agnes Arber was the first woman to receive the Gold Medal of the Linnean Society of London.

Agnes Arber contributed to development of morphological studies in botany during the early part of the 20th century.

Agnes Arber was the first child of Henry Robert Robertson, an artist, and Agnes Lucy Turner, and had three younger siblings, Donald Struan Robertson, Janet Robertson, who later became a portrait painter, and Margaret Robertson, who was a notable suffragist and local politician.

Agnes Arber's father gave her regular drawing lessons during her early childhood, which later provided her with the necessary skills to illustrate her scientific publications herself.

Agnes Arber gained first class results in every examination at both universities, along with several prizes and medals from University College, London.

Agnes Arber was awarded a Doctorate of Science in 1905.

Robertson met Edward Alexander Newell Agnes Arber while studying at Newnham College.

Agnes Arber's only child, Muriel Agnes Arber, was born in 1913, became a geologist, and died in 2004.

Agnes Arber was awarded a Research Fellowship from Newnham College in 1912 and published her first book Herbals, their origin and evolution in the same year.

Agnes Arber studied in the Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women from her marriage until the laboratory's closure in 1927.

Agnes Arber maintained a small laboratory in a back room of her house from then until she stopped performing bench research in the 1940s and turned to philosophical study.

Agnes Arber died on 22 March 1960, at the age of 81, and is buried in the churchyard of St Andrew's, Girton.

Agnes Arber returned to work in Sargant's laboratory at least once during the summer holidays while she was studying at University College London.

Whilst at University College London Agnes Arber conducted research on the gymnosperm group of plants, producing several papers on their morphology and anatomy.

In 1909 Agnes Arber was granted space in the Balfour Laboratory for Women by Newnham College.

Agnes Arber worked in the laboratory until its closure in 1927.

Agnes Arber was able to consult the large collection of printed Herbals in the library of the Botany School at Cambridge as part of her research for this work.

Agnes Arber focused her research on the anatomy and morphology of the monocot group of plants, which she had originally been introduced to by Ethel Sargant.

Agnes Arber provides interpretations of the general principles she used to create her analysis.

Agnes Arber's study was the first to provide a general description and interpretation of aquatic plants.

Agnes Arber was an excellent draughtsperson and often illustrated her books herself; she drew about a third of the illustrations in Water Plants.

Agnes Arber provides a detailed study of the monocot plants from comparing their internal and external anatomy.

Agnes Arber addressed this by creating a distinction between "pure" and "applied" morphology, with her work focusing on comparative anatomy to investigate questions concerning significant topics such as constructing phylogenies, instead of using traditional views of plant structure.

Between 1930 and 1942 Agnes Arber conducted research into the structure of flowers, where she investigated the structure of many different forms and used morphological information to interpret other flower structures.

Agnes Arber's results were published in 10 review papers spanning this period.

In January 1942 Agnes Arber published her last paper involving original botanical research.

Agnes Arber published work on historical botanists, including a comparison between Nehemiah Grew and Marcello Malpighi in 1942, John Ray in 1943 and Sir Joseph Banks in 1945.

Agnes Arber had been introduced to the work of Goethe while at school and remained fascinated by his ideas about botany.

Agnes Arber discusses the processes behind forming a concept from research and examines the philosophy of plant morphology.

Agnes Arber uses this to examine the structure of flowering plants, and proposes the partial-shoot theory of the leaf.

Agnes Arber mentions: "the leaf is a partial-shoot, revealing an inherent urge towards becoming a whole shoot, but never actually attaining this goal, since radial symmetry and the capacity for apical growth suffer inhibition".

Agnes Arber describes research as taking place in six stages: the identification of research question or topic; the collection of data through experiments or observation; the interpretation of the data; testing the validity of the interpretation; communicating the results; and considering the research in context.

Agnes Arber was the first woman botanist and third woman overall to receive this honor.

In February 1961, Muriel Agnes Arber donated some of her mother's surviving materials to the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation.