Agnes Arber. An article in the Annals of Botany from 2001 suggests this image was taken ca. 1916 or 1917 (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Agnes Arber was a British botanist and historian of her subject. In 1946 she became the first female botanist – and the third woman overall – to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, one of the oldest and most esteemed scientific institutions in the world. Not only did this acknowledge Arber’s pioneering research and keen intellect, but it represented a milestone in the recognition of women in science.

Arber’s research focused upon the monocotyledons (often called the ‘monocots’), one of the two major groups of flowering plants (the other being the dicotyledons, also known as ‘dicots’). Arber’s first break-through was in 1912 with the award of a one-year research fellowship at Newnham College, Cambridge where she was given space in the Balfour Laboratory to conduct her research. It was then that she published what has become her best known work Herbals: Their origin and evolution. The book – which is now regarded as a classic and is still in print today – was a reflection of her interest in the history of botany, something that was also manifest in a number of fascinating biographical papers that she wrote on early botanists and naturalists such as Nehemiah Grew (1906), Guy de la Brosse (1913) and John Ray (1943). It should also be noted that Arber was a highly skilled artist, illustrating the majority of her books and papers.

Agnes Arber’s entry from the printed College register of Newnham College, Cambridge (Image: Used with permission from Newnham College, University of Cambridge)

Arber also conducted research into the morphological differences of aquatic plants. This became the subject of her second book Water Plants: A Study of Aquatic Angiosperms which was published in 1920. After the publication of her third book The Monocotyledons in 1925, Arber turned her research interests to the Gramineae, that is the grasses and so of central importance to us. This work resulted in her fourth and final book The Gramineae in 1934.

Arber continued to work in the Balfour Laboratory until its closure in 1927. With no space for her to continue her work in the University’s Botany School, she set up a small laboratory in a bedroom of her own house. As an aside, there is an echo of Ronald Fisher in this behaviour, the renowned evolutionary biologist (also at Cambridge) who similarly used a bedroom in his home as a make-shift laboratory. From that point onward, Arber’s house became the centre of operation for her academic research, and aside from a few small research grants, her work was undertaken without financial support from a professional institution. During World War II, the supply situation was so dire that it became too difficult for Arber to maintain her home laboratory so she turned her intellectual pursuits to philosophy and history of science.

Maura Flannery (2005, p.14) sums up the importance that Arber placed upon philosophy: “She sees philosophical reflection as important work because only when the larger implications of research are understood can its real value be appreciated and the scientific endeavour truly enriched.” This statement is all the more powerful when one considers that Arber, a botanist, had written her finest philosophical works at a time when philosophy of science was dominated by physicists.

One reason that many ‘forgotten heroes’ of science drifted into obscurity is not because their work lacked scientific merit, but because their writing style was largely inaccessible to a lay audience. The palaeontologist Richard Owen is a good example of a scientist who produced some fine pieces of research, but whose writing style was, arguably, so tedious to read that people often did not bother. However, this is certainly not the case with Arber. Arber wrote with an effortless fluidity, intelligent and concise, along with a succinct and accessible style. Her work remains a pleasure to read. Indeed, Arber’s original works can still be read and enjoyed by a modern audience, which makes her obscurity all the more puzzling. So, what is the reason that so few people have heard of Agnes Arber?

In her eloquent overview on Arber’s contributions to science, Flannery (2005) suggests that it is because she has for so long been labelled as ‘anti-evolutionary’. This is all the more unfortunate because it is incorrect. As Flannery (2005, p.15) explains, Arber was not anti-evolutionary and did not refute the fact that species change over time, rather, she questioned “..the idea that natural selection is the dominant mechanism for that change”. Specifically, Arber believed that parallelism – today more commonly known as ‘convergent evolution’ – had a substantial impact on biological form that wasn’t taken into account by Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.

It should be remembered that the 1940s and 1950s were a time when natural selection was widely embraced as the overarching answer to every question about biological life, when in reality there were many scientists, including the eminent biologist D’Arcy Thompson, pointing out that the evolutionary process was more complicated than could solely be accounted for by natural selection alone. Yes, natural selection is a critical factor, but there are other biological, genetic and physical processes at play too. None of these ideas refute the role of natural selection, rather, they are complimentary to it.

However, for a scientist to be branded ‘anti-evolutionary’ is often a nail in the coffin with regards to historical visibility. Once forgotten, the possibility is that it may have been an unjustly driven nail in the first place and so it becomes all the more difficult to acknowledge and thus remove.

As succinctly summed up by Flannery (2005, p.13) “The very fact that Arber achieved scientific recognition despite the lack of an academic position speaks highly of her research and also speaks to the place of women in British science in the first half of the 20th century.”

Text copyright © 2015 Victoria Ling. All rights reserved.

References

Arber, A. (1906) Nehemiah Grew and the study of plant anatomy.  Science Progress 1, 150-158.

Arber, A. (1912) Herbals: Their origin and evolution.  Cambridge University.

Arber, A. (1913) The botanical philosophy of Guy de la Brosse: A study in seventeenth-century thought. Isis 1, 359-369.

Arber, A. (1943) A seventeenth century naturalist: John Ray. Isis 34, 319-324.

Flannery, M.C. (2005) Agnes Arber in the 21st century.  The Systematist 24, 13-17.

Packer, K. (1997) A laboratory of one's own: The life and works of Agnes Arber, F.R.S. (1879-1960). Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 51, 87-104.

Schmid, R. (2001) Agnes Arber, nee Robertson (1879-1960): Fragments of her life, including her place in biology and in women's studies. Annals of Botany 88, 1105-1128.

Thomas, H.H. (1960) Agnes Arber. 1879-1960. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 6, 1-11.

Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov (Image: Library of Congress reproduction number LC-USZ62-118109/Wikimedia Commons)

Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov (1887-1943) was a Russian botanist, geneticist, and agronomist. He was President of the National Geographic Society of the USSR, set up the Department of Genetics at the All-Union Institute of Plant Breeding in what was then Leningrad, and founded what was once the world’s largest collection of plant seeds, collected from every corner of the world.

Vavilov had a contagious enthusiasm for science and his contribution to evolutionary studies was immense, yet he has largely passed under the radar in terms of the wider public and scientific appreciation. Not only have his scientific contributions failed to be given the wider acknowledgement they so readily deserve, but his premature death was shameful; in 1941 he was imprisoned for criticising anti-Mendelian theories that were supported by the Stalin regime, and he died of starvation in the Saratov prison two years later.

Vavilov’s main research interest was in cultivating crops such as wheat and corn in order to tackle famine in Russia and other parts of the world. Specifically, he wanted to use the new science of genetics to breed varieties of crop that not only yielded more grain, but that would also withstand extreme temperatures and be more resistant to insects. As described by Ilya Zakharov (2005), in order for Vavilov to accomplish this goal he needed to overcome two interrelated hurdles. The first was the identification and collection of plant samples from across the globe in order to study and harness their genetic potential. The second was the conservation of the diverse range of wild and domesticated plants in their native setting, the diversity of which Vavilov believed was being eroded as a result of the destruction of natural habitats. Presciently, he spoke about the ‘geography of genes’ and the study of the distribution of genes is now a flourishing area of scientific research, both in plants and animals (including humans).

One of his seminal papers, published in 1912, was in Genetics and Agronomy, where he argued that Mendelian genetics could be used as a basis for the cultivation of plants. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Vavilov made expeditions to 40 countries, spanning five continents in order to collect samples from cultivated plants. This was an immense undertaking, particularly given that many of the countries he visited were politically unstable, making such excursions decidedly risky.

Indeed, for his expedition to Afghanistan in 1924 the Russian Geographic Society awarded him a medal in recognition of his ‘Exploits in Geography’. At the time, his work was widely acknowledged, not only in Russia but across Europe, and just before the First World War he worked in leading laboratories in Britain, France and Germany. Vavilov established the world’s first international seed bank of food plants, containing hundreds of thousands of specimens and preserved within that was the genetic diversity which could be used to breed the high-yield, high-resilience crops which were a test of his hypotheses.

Vavilov was ahead of his time in recognizing the importance of preserving genetic diversity. For example, he identified seven primary centres of origin for the world’s main crops. Centres of origin are geographical areas that have been identified as the original source of specific crop plants. It is from these primary sources that crops were domesticated. The identification and preservation of these regions is essential for the cultivation of crops today because not only are they important sources for the plants’ genes, but highlight areas where biosafety measures should be considered when it comes to introducing genetically modified crops and/or habitats threatened with destruction.

Scientifically, it can be argued that Vavilov’s work on crops and genetic diversity was not only linked to, but also overshadowed, by his profoundly interesting idea of ‘Law of Homologous Series’, first published in the Journal of Genetics in 1922. The starting point was to emphasise the importance of the initial genotype and its subsequent variability. As highlighted by Peter Pringle (2009, p.71): “Darwin was the first to note that similar, sometimes even identical, characteristics arise in animals and plants. On the banks of the River Plate between Uruguay and Argentina, Darwin saw bulldog-faced cows that, because of their jaw, resembled certain breeds of dogs and pigs. But Darwin could take his observation no further because genetics, the science of heredity and variation, did not exist”. Vavilov’s Law of Homologous Series, however, essentially picks up where Darwin left off. To further quote Pringle (2009, p.71):

“Vavilov laid out a simple rule for hunters of crop plants: similar features, such as stem size, and leaf size and shape, could be found in the various evolutionary stages of all closely related species, genera, and even families.”

In 1940 Vavilov was arrested by the ruthless Stalin regime for his criticism of the anti-Mendelian concepts of the Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko, which happened to be favoured by Stalin. This meant that scientific dissent from Lysenko’s theories, regardless of how absurd Lysenko’s claims may have been, was met with persecution and even a death sentence. Vavilov was sentenced to death in 1941, but in 1942 this was amended to twenty years imprisonment. In 1943 he died in prison of starvation. So great was Lysenko’s political influence that in 1948 the Lenin Academy approved ‘Lysenkoism’ as the accepted direction of biology for the Soviet Union.

Following the death of Stalin in 1953 there was a review of death sentences carried out under his authority, and in 1955 the verdict against Vavilov was rescinded by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union. Despite increasing criticism from scientists across the globe, Lysenko managed to maintain his powerful position, and it was not until 1965 that he was forced to resign as Director of the Institute of Genetics. Following that, in 1967, the All-Union Institute of Plant Industry was re-named the ‘N.I. Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry’. By this time, Vavilov was considered to be one of the great names in Soviet science. Far too late, but at least some recognition of a great biologist. In the words of Zakharov (2005, p.301):

“The whole life of Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov is a remarkable example of wholehearted devotion to science, to his homeland and to humanity.”

Text copyright © 2015 Victoria Ling. All rights reserved.

References

Crow, J.F. (1993)  N.I. Vavilov, Martyr to Genetic Truth.  Genetics 134, 1-4.

Crow, J.F. (2001)  Plant breeding giants: Burbank, the Artist; Vavilov, the Scientist.  Genetics 158,1391–1395.

Pringle, P. (2009)  The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov.  JR Books.

Tzotzos, G.T., Head, G.P. and Hull, R. (2009)  Genetically Modified Plants: Assessing Safety and Managing Risk.  Elsevier.

Vavilov, N. I. (1922)  The law of homologous series in variation.  Journal of Genetics 12, 47-89.

Zakharov, I.A. (2005)  Nikolai I Vavilov (1887–1943).  Journal of Biosciences 30, 299–301.