British army surgeon and botanist from Bristol. William Freeman Daniell, MRCS, first came to Africa in 1845 to lead an exploratory expedition in central Africa. While there he corresponded with Hooker at Kew and made a collection of about 100 plant specimens. Soon after his return to England in June 1847, he joined the army medical department as an assistant surgeon. He was sent back to Africa that November and for the next nine years was stationed in Gambia, the Gold Coast, and Sierra Leone. In 1853 he was promoted to staff surgeon.
On his own initiative, outside his military duties, he made studies in tropical disease and economic botany. His Sketches of the Medical Topography and Native Diseases of the Gulf of Guinea, published in 1849, attracted interest, and was followed by a series of articles in the Pharmaceutical Journal, published between 1850 and 1860, in which he described the indigenous uses of various West African plants and their potential economic and medical value.
During his residence in Africa, he began a correspondence with Darwin and sent herbarium specimens to the British Museum and Pharmaceutical Society, which included discoveries, such as Phrynium danielli Benn. (= Thaumatococcus daniellii (Benn.) Benth.) a natural sweetener from Sierra Leone, and the genus Daniellia Benn. As a result of his scientific contributions, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical and the Linnean Society, and was given honorary membership to the Pharmaceutical Society.
He continued his botanical work during his later postings in the West Indies (1857-58), Colchester (1958-59), China (1860), Templemore (1861-62), and Jamaica (1862-64). He died of a lung disease in Southampton in 1865, soon after completing his last paper, which announced the discovery of caffeine in the cola nut. Amomum danielli Hook f. (= Aframomum daniellii (Hook. f.) K. Schum.), Monostiche danielli Horan. (Donax daniellii (Horan.) Roberty) and Zanthoxylum danielli Benn. (= Tetradium daniellii (Benn.) T.G. Hartley) are among the species named after him.
Sources:
H. Bell, "Daniell, William Freeman (1817-1865)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
