Harry Allan

rdf:langString Harry Allan

rdf:langString Harry Allan

rdf:langString Harry Allan

rdf:langString Wellington, New Zealand

rdf:langString Nelson, New Zealand

rdf:langString Vegetation of Mount Peel, Canterbury, N.Z.

rdf:langString

rdf:langString L. B. Moore

rdf:langString Hector Memorial Medal

rdf:langString Hutton Memorial Medal

rdf:langString Harry Howard Barton Allan

rdf:langString Allan

rdf:langString Paddocks used for research at the Plant Research station, and later the Grasslands Division, in Palmerston North. c. 1962.

rdf:langString The Plant Chemistry Laboratory at the Plant Research station, and later the Grasslands Division, in Palmerston North. c. 1950.

rdf:langString Botanist

rdf:langString DSIR Grasslands Department.jpg

rdf:langString Plant Chemistry Laboratory DSIR Grasslands Division.jpg

rdf:langString When the laurel wreath was held high and the words “Harry Howard Allan, absens” were spoken, accompanied by gunfire, our thoughts went to his sick-bed at the other end of the world. His last great work will stand as a monument to a great personality, a famous botanist, and an unforgettable friend.

rdf:langString For himself he asked nothing except perhaps to be remembered as a true friend of botany. Of such a one Linnaeus wrote: “Botanicus verus desudabit in augendo amabilem scientiam.”

rdf:langString Harry Howard Barton Allan CBE (27 April 1882 – 29 October 1957) was a New Zealand teacher, botanist, scientific administrator, and writer. Despite never receiving a formal education in botany, he became an eminent scientist, publishing over 100 scientific papers, three introductory handbooks on New Zealand plants, and completing the first volume of a flora in his lifetime. Born in Nelson, he was educated at Nelson College and later Auckland University College, from which he graduated MA in 1908. He worked for many years as a teacher of English and agricultural studies at secondary schools around New Zealand. Throughout his teaching career, he became increasingly interested in and knowledgeable of botany, and wrote several articles in academic journals. He often collaborated and spoke with botanists, such as Alfred and Leonard Cockayne. For his lengthy botanical study of Mount Peel, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science (DSc) in 1923. He became a member of the Linnean society and the New Zealand Institute, and was appointed a systematic botanist for the Plant Research Station in 1928. He spent twenty years working there, becoming head of the botany division when the research institute was split up in 1936 by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (D.S.I.R). Allan oversaw and contributed to vast amounts of research surrounding New Zealand's plants—particularly on grasses, pollen, and genetics. He retired in 1948 and was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (C.B.E) for services to botany in New Zealand in the King's Birthday Honours that year. In retirement he worked on volume one of Flora of New Zealand, the first in a series of books describing the introduced and endemic plants of New Zealand. He died before it was published in 1957, aged 75.

rdf:langString Allan

rdf:langString Harry Howard Barton Allan