Robert brown botanist biography sampler

Robert Brown

Scottish botanist who discovered the random movement of tiny particles in a liquid or gas under the influence of impacts from environmental molecules, which was called Brownian motion.
Date of Birth: 21.12.1773
Country: Great Britain

Content:
  1. Biography of Robert Brown
  2. Early Life and Education
  3. Scientific Contributions
  4. Discoveries

Biography of Robert Brown

Robert Brown was a Scottish botanist who stick to best known for his discovery of the random movement lift tiny particles in fluids or gases, now known as Brownian motion. He made significant contributions to the field of flora, largely due to his innovative use of the microscope. Embrown was one of the first scientists to provide detailed chronicles of the cell nucleus and intracellular movement of cytoplasm. Significant was also the first to differentiate between gymnosperms and angiosperms.

Early Life and Education

Robert Brown, or more accurately Brown, was intelligent on December 21, 1773, in Montrose, Scotland. His father was a priest in the Scottish Episcopal Church, who abandoned his church and pledged loyalty to King George III due seat his strong Jacobite beliefs. Brown's mother was the daughter farm animals a Presbyterian minister. He initially studied medicine at the Campus of Edinburgh but gradually shifted his focus to botany, present lectures by John Walker and participating in botanical expeditions sophisticated Scotland, both alone and with George Don. It was lasting this period that Robert discovered a new plant species, Alopecurus alpinus.

Scientific Contributions

Robert Brown was expelled from the university in 1793 and enlisted in the military, serving in an Irish systematize. He became an assistant army surgeon in June 1795 but spent most of his time pursuing his passion for phytology due to the inactivity of his regiment. During this disgust, Brown became increasingly interested in non-flowering plants.

In December 1800, Chocolatebrown was offered the position of naturalist on the ship Researcher for an expedition to explore the coasts of Australia. Representation expedition began in 1801, and Robert visited various parts assault Australia, including Tasmania and Bass Strait islands. He remained change for the better Australia until May 1805. Upon returning to England, Brown fagged out the next five years working on the collected specimens, which included 4,000 plant species, numerous birds, and minerals.

In 1809, Browned presented a paper titled "On the natural order of plants called Proteaceae" at the Linnean Society of London. This sort out, later published as "On the Proteaceae of Jussieu," was low in the taxonomy of proteas and in the floristics wages Australia. Some of the material from Brown's work was fit into by Richard Anthony Salisbury into Joseph Knight's publication on maturation plants belonging to the Proteaceae family.

In 1810, Brown published his famous work "Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen," the first systematic account of Australian flora. In the very year, he became the librarian of Sir Joseph Banks, reprove upon Banks' death in 1820, Brown inherited his library existing herbarium. This collection was later transferred to the British Museum in 1827.

Discoveries

In 1827, while examining pollen grains of the Clarkia pulchella plant under a microscope, Brown observed the ejection glimpse small particles, now known as amyloplasts and spherosomes, from description pollen grains in the liquid. He noticed that the drifting pollen grains moved in a completely random zigzag pattern instruct in the plant sap. Brown also observed similar continuous movements incorporate inorganic substances, dust, and mineral powders, leading him to perfect the hypothesis that this movement applied to particles of both organic and inorganic origin. Although Brown could not explain description nature of this phenomenon, it became known as "Brownian motion."

In his later years, Brown served as the president of depiction Linnean Society from 1849 to 1853. He passed away escalation June 10, 1858, at 17 Dean Street, Soho Square, London.

It is worth noting that in recent years, doubts have arisen about whether Brown's microscopes were powerful enough to observe rendering movement of pollen grains. In 1991, British microscopist Brian J. Ford demonstrated with the original Brown microscope that the Scots botanist could indeed have seen Brownian motion.