British phycologist. George Stephen West was the son of another eminent phycologist, William West, with whom he published for much of his life. Born in Yorkshire the boy was practically raised in the field, spending his holidays collecting algal specimens with his father and older brother, William West junior. From the age of twelve George was acknowledged in his father's papers and from the early 1890s (when he produced illustrations for William senior's paper on the freshwater algae of western Ireland) the younger son was responsible for line drawings in his father's papers.
Schooled at Bradford Technical College and the Royal College of Science, from 1893 he was co-authoring works on the algal flora of Yorkshire with his father. In 1895 he began to publish his own papers, particularly in the field of zoology, and the same year he entered Cambridge University. West graduated in 1898 and the following year published an extensive treatment of the algal flora of Cambridge. Soon appointed professor of natural history at the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester, while there he published A Treatise on the British Freshwater Algae (1904). Moving to Birmingham in 1906 to take up an appointment as botany lecturer at the city's university, he was awarded a doctorate in 1908 and made professor several years later.
George and William West senior were always particularly close, much more so that the father was with his eldest son, although William junior also worked as a botanist for much of his short life. In total the father-son team published almost 40 scientific articles together, not only from their own fieldwork in the U.K., but increasingly from overseas collections. In about 1900 their attention turned almost exclusively to planktonic algae and material was sent from Denmark and Portugal, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Burma and the West Indies for their expert examination. They also received collections from major expeditions such as Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic expedition and Friedrich Welwitsch's travels in southern Africa.
Between 1904 and 1912 the pair published perhaps their most important work, British Desmidiaceae, a series of monographs covering all the desmids. The fifth and final volume was produced after the death of both Wests by Nellie Carter. Although William senior increasingly turned his attention to the mosses and lichens, his younger son remained faithful to algae his whole life. His book simply entitled Algae was published in 1916. George was amongst those who, in 1919, were killed in the great Spanish Influenza epidemic. He outlived his father by only five years. His 3,000 algal illustrations were left to the British Museum (Natural History Museum in London) and his vast collection of fresh water algal specimens was left to the University of Birmingham.
Sources:
D.M. John, L.R. Johnson and R. Huxley, 2003, "The Wests: Their Lives and Phycological Legacy", The Phycologist, 64: 11-13
B. Muriel Bristol, 1921, "Some aspects of the work of the later professor G.S. West, MA, DSc, FLS", Proceedings of the Birmingham Natural History and Philosophical Society, 14(4): 139-146.
