Biography

New Zealand horticulturist, plant pathologist and mycologist. Cunningham spent his early life at Moa Flat, Otago, where his father managed a sheep station. He grew up among six brothers and sisters and, aged 14 (following his schooling), joined his father in farming at Ettrick. At 16 he was working on a fruit farm in Roxburgh. Cunningham then spent a year in Australia in 1909-1910, working in orchards in Tasmania and South Australia and at a vineyard near Adelaide. He also cut sugarcane in Queensland and led a camel train through the centre of the country at one point. Having proved his interest in fruit farming, on his return home his father bought him some land at Mapua, Nelson, which Cunningham planted with fruit trees. To speed up the planting, he blasted rather than dug holes in the heavy clay ground, using explosives.

Within a few years Cunningham left his orchard (and a burgeoning career in motorcycle racing) to serve in the First World War, being stationed in Gallipoli as a battalion scout. After being injured and falling ill with dysentery, he spent time in hospital in Egypt and was sent home. This period of convalescence saw him develop two interests; one in Maori culture, inspired by fellow officer and Maori linguist Gerald Matthews; and another in botany and plant diseases. In 1916 he met J.A. Campbell, Assistant Director of the Department of Agriculture Horticulture Division, and through Campbell, a recovered Cunningham was appointed junior orchard instructor at the Horticulture Division in Palmerston North in 1917. The following year he married Maggie McGregor, with whom he would have a daughter.

Before long Cunningham began to specialise in plant diseases, setting up a laboratory at his home. In 1919 he was invited to join the plant pathology laboratory led by Alfred Cockayne at Weraroa, Levin, which he did. The move suited him well and with E.H. Atkinson he often ventured into the surrounding bush to collect specimens of forest fungi. The lab moved to Wellington in 1920, where Cunningham took the opportunity to gain qualifications at Victoria University College, gaining his BSc, MSc and PhD within the space of a few years (1924-1927). Visiting England in 1924 he represented New Zealand at the Imperial Mycological Conference in London, and in 1925 published a book on fungal diseases of fruit trees. Before 1928 he had also published 30 papers on plant pathology and 32 on taxonomic mycology.

1928 saw Cunningham relocate to a new plant research station back in Palmerston North, where he was put in charge of the mycology section. He had earlier been to the South Island with H.H. Allan to investigate hybridism and fungi in alpine climes. The pair developed a firm friendship and Cunningham recruited Allan as Systematic Botanist at Palmerston North. In 1929 Cunningham toured Europe and America to look at the organisation of other plant research stations, in preparation for heading the one at Palmerston North. He was not made director of the station, however; the site remained without an overall director for several years, during which time Cunningham published a book on rust fungi (1931) for which he was awarded a DSc by the University of New Zealand. Over the next few years he investigated spray fungicides, resulting in a series of papers and another book, and visited Australia to liaise with produce growers at a plant quarantine conference, where he managed to overturn an Australian ban on the import of New Zealand potatoes, apples and citrus because of diseases. Despite his successes and the development of his laboratory with eight staff, by 1935 his directorship of Palmerston North had still not materialised and Cunningham resigned in protest at the working conditions and lack of facilities.

After some months off, during which time he climbed mountains in Central Otago and prospected for gold, Cunningham returned to plant research as the new government established a Plant Diseases Division in the new Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR). He was made director of the Division, initially based in Auckland, and under his supervision a new laboratory was opened at Mount Albert in 1939 and many new staff hired. The new director set up a sub-station on the South Island at Oratia, which concentrated on pomology and field crop diseases. During World War Two Cunnigham's researchers looked at mould growth on military equipment and became involved in starting a linen-flax industry in the South Island.

Towards the end of the 1940s, Cunningham began to delegate his administrative responsibilities and concentrated more and more on taxonomic studies of wood-rotting fungi. In 1944 his oeuvre on puff balls, The Gastromycetes of Australia and New Zealand (1944), appeared, and in 1951 he made a study trip to Europe to examine fungi in herbaria there. Three years after retiring he went back to Britain once more, where the tercentenary of the Royal Society was being celebrated (1960). He died in 1962; his final two works on wood-rotting fungi (Thelephoraceae and Polyporaceae) were published in 1963 and 1965.

Cunningham's lifelong work in plant pathology and systematic mycology was well recognised. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and received its Hutton Memorial Medal in 1935 and the Hector Memorial Medal and Prize in 1948. He was appointed CBE in 1949 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1950. He remained a keen collector up until his last years, gathering material for the Plant Diseases Division Mycological Herbarium indefatigably.

Sources:
E.E.C., 1965, "Gordon Herriot Cunningham, CBE, DSc, PhD, FRSNZ, FANZAAS (1892-1962)", Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 93: 82-90
J.M. Dingley, "Cunningham, Gordon Herriot 1892-1962" Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, updated 22 June 2007:
http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/, accessed 13 August 2010
J. Ramsbottom, 1964, "George Herriot Cunningham 1892-1962", Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 10: 15-37.