United States botanist. Francis Ernest Lloyd was born of Welsh parentage in Manchester, England, but moved with his family to Philadelphia when he was still a boy. After working as a cowpuncher, dentist's assistant and apprentice watchmaker, he entered Princeton University with the intention of training for the ministry. Once there, however, his interest soon switched to biology and he graduated instead with Bachelor's degree in 1891 and from then on held teaching positions at various institutions. After earning his Master's degree from Princeton in 1895, he pursued graduate studies in Bonn and Munich. At Munich he studied with Professor Karl Ritter von Goebel with whom he maintained an enduring friendship. His teaching career began with a brief stint at Williams College, followed by a few years as instructor in biology and geology at Pacific University, Oregon and a further nine years at the Teacher's College of Columbia University, where he co-authored The Teaching of Biology in Secondary Schools (1904). During this period he also taught at the Harvard Summer School.
The next phase of his career was largely devoted to research in the field of plant physiology, an interest which began when he was employed as an investigator at the Desert Botanical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution and at the Arizona Experiment Station in 1906 and 1907. As a result of his work in the desert, he published his book on The Physiology of Stomata (1908) and a monograph on Guayule and its methods of cultivation (1911). For more than twenty years he was consultant to the United States rubber industry and, even in retirement, was employed during the Second World War to advise on the cultivation of guayule.
As a researcher at Alabama Polytechnic Institute, he was particularly concerned with the role of biophysics in cell physiology. From 1912 until his retirement as Professor Emeritus in 1934, he held the chair in botany at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where his most valuable research dealt with the various trapping mechanisms of carnivorous plants, particularly those of Utricularia, studies which continued after his retirement to Carmel, California and culminated in the publication of his book The Carnivorous Plants in 1942. He also made important contributions to our understanding of the conjugation mechanism of Spirogyra, a process he recorded with motion picture cameras, and the embryology of Rubiaceae.
His highest honour was the presidency of the Royal Society of Canada. He also served as third president and was an honorary life member of the American Society of Plant Physiologists. He received honorary doctorates from the University of Wales and Masaryk University, Brno. In Mexico he collected for the Continental Rubber Company, on the Carl Lumholz expedition to the Sierra Madres in 1890s, and with Spencer Mills Tracy.
Sources:
Anon, 1948, "In Memoriam: Francis Ernest Lloyd 1868-1947", Plant Physiology, 23(1): 1-4.
