William Dawson Hooker

British physician
The basics

Quick Facts

IntroBritish physician
PlacesUnited Kingdom Great Britain
wasPhysician Scientist Botanist
Work fieldHealthcare Science
Gender
Male
Birth4 April 1816, Halesworth, United Kingdom
Death1 January 1840 (aged 23 years)
Star signAries
Family
Mother:Maria Sarah Turner
Father:William Jackson Hooker
Siblings:Elizabeth Hooker Joseph Dalton Hooker
Spouse:Isabella Whitelaw Smith
The details

Biography

William Dawson Hooker, M.D. (1816-1840) was a British physician and botanist, the son of Sir William Jackson Hooker and an elder brother to Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, the botanists who created the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Life

Hooker was born on 4 April 1816. He studied medicine from 1832 at Glasgow University, where in 1838 he earned his M.D. He was appointed "Professor of Materia Medica" at the Andersonian University the same year. An 1839 dissertation on the cinchonas and their use in treating malarial fever earned him admission to the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. The same year he travelled to northern Norway, producing notes on various topics including local customs of the Laplanders, flora, and fauna. Intending to improve his poor health, he took passage to Kingston, Jamaica, but instead died there of yellow fever on 7 January 1840.

Family

Hooker was married to Isabella Whitehead. Their only child was Willielma Hooker (1840-1879), who was born after his death. She in turn married James Campbell in 1862. Willielma's eldest child was named William Jackson Hooker Campbell, after his great-grandfather. She died while giving birth to a stillborn child, leaving six others.

Works

The contents of this page are sourced from Wikipedia article on 28 Jun 2020. The contents are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.