Quick Facts
Biography
Cecil Victor Boley Marquand (1897–1943) was an English botanist, the only son of Ernest David Marquand, the author of a Flora of Guernsey. Cecil Marquand was born at Richmond, Surrey, on 7 June 1897. Educated at Elizabeth College, Guernsey, from 1906 to 1910, he attended Lycée Henri IV in Paris for a year before entering Bedford School (1911-1913) whence he went up to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. in 1919, proceeding to M.A. in 1922. His education was interrupted by service in the British Army during World War I, when he served in the Machine Gun Corps before gaining a commission in the Royal Tank Corps, from which he was invalided out.
Career
On leaving Cambridge in 1919, Marquand was appointed research assistant, investigating Avena at the new Welsh Plant Breeding Station at Aberystwyth. In 1923, he moved to Kew, where he worked as an assistant in the Herbarium, initially continuing his work on grasses before taking charge of the Chinese section. He wrote numerous papers on the flora of eastern Asia, notably on Cyananthus, Buddleja and gentians, although his private interest was Bryophytes, which he studied in the Alps and highlands of Britain during his vacations. However, his health permanently impaired during WW1, he took early retirement from Kew in 1939.
Death
Upon retirement, Marquand moved to the isle of Skye, off the western coast of Scotland. He was drowned on 1 July 1943, while on a boating expedition in search of rare algae.