British botanist, Keeper of the Herbarium at Kew from 1899-1908. William Hemsley was born in East Hoathly, a small village in East Sussex, and began his training in horticulture and botany in 1860 at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. In 1865 he was appointed herbarium clerk and helped Bentham in his work for the Flora australiensis, for which he was thanked in the acknowledgements, indicating how highly the distinguished botanist thought of his assistant. However, after just two years Hemsley was forced to relinquish his position due to ill health.
He returned to Kew independently, carrying out private botanical studies for many years. Among other works, between 1879 and 1888 he completed the botany section of Frederick Godman and Osbert Salvin's encyclopaedia of Central American biology, Biologia Centrali-Americana and published a report on the botanical findings of the HMS Challenger scientific expedition. His Diagnoses plantarum novarum mexicanarum appeared in the late 1870s and "Index Florae Sinensis", co-authored by Hemsley, in the Journal of the Linnean Society between 1886 and 1905. Four sections of the Flora of Tropical Africa (1868, 1877, 1906 and 1911) also bore his name.
These achievements and many others afforded him numerous honours during his lifetime, including election to the Linnean Society (1875), the Royal Society (1889), and honorary membership of the Natural History Society of Mexico and of the Royal Horticultural Society, which awarded him the Victoria Medal of Honour in Horticulture in 1909. Perhaps his most prized distinction, though, was an honorary degree from the University of Aberdeen, which touched him because of his lack of formal schooling in early life. As he put it: "I have often felt the want of a university training, which no amount of study can replace." Despite his words, he was heartily praised for teaching himself French, German and Latin as well as achieving scientific distinction without formal qualifications. In his German he was helped by Edmund Goeze, with whom he shared accommodation at one time. Goeze later became curator at the botanics gardens of Greifswald in Germany.
Hemsley returned to Kew in 1889, taking on a part-time post as the herbarium assistant for India before progressing to full-time work as principal assistant. From 1899 until his retirement in 1908 he held the title Keeper of the Herbarium, the administrative duties entailed by the role curtailing his publishing activities somewhat. After his retirement he lived in Twickenham, returning often to nearby Kew. He continued to contribute to Kew publications and the Gardeners' Chronicle, while his last major work was the 1916 Flora of Seychelles and Aldabra. With his wife he moved to Broadstairs, Kent, in 1917, to be near their only daughter. By this time Hemsley was afflicted with debilitating paralysis; he died in 1924.
Sources:
Anon., 1924, "William Botting Hemsley, his life and work", Journal of the Kew Guild, 4(32): 331-337
Anon., 1924, Gardeners' Chronicle, 76: 275-276.
