Botanist David Prain served as Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens of Calcutta and Kew. He was born in Fettercairn, Kincardineshire, where his father was a saddler. Prain went on to study natural sciences at the University of Aberdeen before becoming a schoolteacher in Ramsgate, Kent, though after two years he returned to Scotland to train in medicine. Qualifying with the highest honours in 1883 (in Aberdeen and Edinburgh), he worked as a demonstrator of anatomy at Edinburgh and Aberdeen universities until 1884, when he was recruited to the Indian Medical Service as a physician. In this role he was attached to various naval regiments and military hospitals in India, but also had the chance to stand in as a herbarium curator in the Calcutta Botanic Gardens for a few months in 1885.
Prain was recalled to Calcutta in 1887, when he was officially appointed curator of the herbarium. He also married his wife, Margaret Thomson, in this year. Among his early research activities, carried out around this time, was a report on Indian hemp, followed by official studies of wheat, mustards, pulses and indigo for the Bengal government.
When Sir George King retired as the Calcutta gardens' director in 1898, Prain took over, also being put in charge of the Botanical Survey of India and the cinchona cultivation programme in Bengal. In addition he served as professor of botany at Calcutta Medical College.
In 1903 Prain joined Sir Francis Younghusband's expedition to the Sikkim-Tibet boundary, collecting plants on the Tibetan plateau. During his time in Asia he also collected in Burma (Myanmar), Ceylon (Sri Lanka), the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Prain returned to England in 1905 to succeed William Thiselton-Dyer as director at Kew, in which position he would remain until 1922. During Prain's term of office a medicinal garden was formed in the grounds of Cambridge Cottage, a large tank for aquatic plants was installed, and the Japanese gateway, made for the Japan-British exhibition in 1910, was acquired. His willingness to delegate decision-making was reputedly appreciated after the autocratic leadership style of Thiselton-Dyer. Prain also revived Kew Bulletin. After his retirement he served as chair of the advisory council of the Imperial Institute on plant and animal products.
Among Prain's publications was the 1903 work Bengal Plants, describing nearly 3,000 species and published at his own expense. He also authored numerous publications on tropical African flora, the genus Dioscorea (with I.H. Burkill), and on Argemone, Cannabis and quinine. He was chair of the John Innes Horticultural Institution council from 1909 and president of the Linnean Society (1916-19), from which he received the Linnean Medal (1935). He was vice-president from 1919 of the Royal Horticultural Society, which awarded him the Victoria Medal of Honour (1912) and a Veitch Memorial Medal (1933). Among the other honours bestowed on him were appointments as Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in January 1912 and a knighthood in June of the same year. He died at Whyteleafe, Surrey on 16 March 1944.
Sources:
Anon., 1912, "Lieutenant-Colonel Sir David Prain", The Garden, 76: 313-314
I.H. Burkill, 1944, "David Prain (1857-1944)", Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society, 4(13): 746-770
R. Desmond, 2004, "Prain, Sir David (1857-1944)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn:
www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35602, accessed 12 March 2012
E.D. Merrill, 1944, "Sir David Prain (1857-1944)", Year Book of the American Philosophical Society, 1944: 379-383.
