Biography

John Stevens Henslow (1796-1861), botanist and Church of England clergyman, was born on 6 February 1796 at Rochester, Kent. Surrounded by many books on natural history and greatly encouraged by both his parents, the young Henslow began his education at home, continuing at day schools in Rochester and then, as a boarder, at a school in Camberwell. Here the drawing-master, George Samuel, a keen entomologist, introduced Henslow to eminent zoologists and entomologists. In October 1814 Henslow entered St John's College, Cambridge. At that time there was little choice of subject available, and his study was principally mathematical. On the 1825, on the death of Thomas Martyn, the professor of botany, he succeeded to this chair also and began his rejuvenation of botanical science in Cambridge. Shortly afterwards he resigned his professorship of mineralogy. The young Charles Darwin, who went up to Christ's College in 1828, fell under his spell, with important consequences for modern biological science. Henslow's only substantial work, entitled The Principles of Descriptive and Physiological Botany, published in 1835, made widely available to British scientists the important work of De Candolle and other, mainly French, botanists. From 1839 onwards he attended to his minimum commitments in Cambridge, which included a lecture course in the Easter term, and an interest in the new botanic garden, which was officially opened in 1846, and which retains today many marks of Henslow's ideas. The whole purpose of the garden was explained by him in his Address to the members of the University of Cambridge on the expediency of improving, and on the funds required for remodelling and supporting the botanic garden. This twenty-page pamphlet, dated 1846, sets out with admirable clarity what a botanical garden should do, in providing facilities for growing plants for teaching and research. Henslow died at the rectory, Hitcham, on 16 May 1861.

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