Sir Albert Charles Seward (1863-1941), botanist and geologist, was born in Lancaster on 9 October 1863. He attended Lancaster Grammar School and St John's College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a Harkness scholarship in 1888. He became a university lecturer in Botany in 1890 and was elected to a Fellowship at St John's College in 1899, although he shortly afterwards moved to Emmanuel as Science Tutor (and Fellow), 1899-1906. He was Professor of Botany, 1906-1936, Master of Downing College from 1915 to 1936 and Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, 1924-1926. He was a prolific academic, writing ten major books and more than one hundred papers in the field of Botany, taking part in an expedition to Western Greenland in 1921. He was a Fellow of the Geological Society from 1886 (president 1922-23), a Fellow of the Royal Society from 1898 (Vice-President 1934-40, awarded the Royal Medal, 1925, and Darwin Medal, 1934) and Linnean Society and was also President of the British Association (1939) and British Philosophical Society. In later life, he presided over the committee of the Scott Polar Institute (founded 1920) and Fenland Research Committee. He was knighted in 1936, the year he retired from his Mastership at Downing and Chair of Botany. He died at Oxford on 11 April 1941.