George Bentham was an English botanist, who lived form 1800 to 1884. He is seen as the first systematic botanist of the nineteenth century
A taxonomic system, the Bentham & Hooker system for seed plants, was published in Bentham and Hooker's Genera plantarum ad exemplaria imprimis in herbariis kewensibus servata definita in three volumes between 1862 and 1883.
George Bentham (1800-1884) and Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911) were British botanists who were closely affiliated to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in England. Their system of botanical taxonomy was based on the principle of natural affinities and is considered as pre-Darwinian as it does not take evolution into account. The Genera plantarum classified an estimated 97,205 species into 202 families and 7,569 genera.
While studying at Angoulême, Bentham came across a copy of A. P. de Candolle's Flore française, and became interested in the analytical tables for identifying plants. He immediately tested them on the first plant he saw. The result was successful and he applied it to every plant he came across. In London in 1823, he met English botanists. His uncle pushed him to study law at Lincoln's Inn. He was called to the bar and in 1832 held his first and only legal brief. However, his interest in botany never flagged and he became secretary of the Horticultural
Society of London from 1829 to 1840. In 1832, he inherited the property of his uncle, Jeremy Bentham. Having inherited his father's estate the previous year, he was now sufficiently well off to do whatever he wanted, which was botany, jurisprudence and logic.
Bentham's life spanned the Darwinian revolution, and his young colleague Joseph Dalton Hooker was Darwin's closest friend and one of the first to accept Darwin's ideas. Until then, Bentham unquestioningly believed that species were fixed. In 1874 he wrote that "Fifteen years have sufficed to establish a theory of evolution by natural selection". Bentham's conversion to the new line of thought was complete, and included a change from typology in taxonomy to an appreciation that "We cannot form an idea of a species from a single individual, nor of a genus from a single one of its species. We can no more set up a typical species than a typical individual."
WorksBentham; Catalogue des plantes indigènes des Pyrénées et du Bas Languedoc; Paris 1826.
Bentham; Outline of a new system of logic, with a critical examination of Dr Whately's
Elements of Logic; 1827.
Bentham; Labiatarum genera et species; 1836.
Bentham; Commentationes de Leguminosarum generibus; Annals of the Vienna Museum.
Bentham; Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis, which was being carried on by his friend, A. P. de Candolle.
Bentham; The
Botany of the Voyage of H.M.S.
Sulphur; 1844.
Bentham; Flora Hongkongensis; 1861.
Bentham; Flora Australiensis, in seven volumes; 1863 to1878.
Bentham & Dalton Hooker; Genera Plantarum; 1862 to 1883.
Bentham; Handbook of the British flora; 1858.
Bentham & Hooker; Bentham & Hooker system; 1862 to 1883.
Bentham; On the Distribution of the Monocotyledonous Orders into Primary
Groups, more especially in reference to the Australian Flora, with notes on some points of Terminology; Journal of the Linnean
Society of London,
Botany, 15 (88): 490–520; February 1877; doi:10.1111/j.1095-8339.1877.tb00261.x.
Bentham; Genera plantarum ad exemplaria imprimis in herbariis kewensibus servata definita; 3 volumes; London, L Reeve & Co; 1862 to1883.
Bentham; Outline of a New System of Logic: With a Critical Examination of Dr. Whately's "
Elements of Logic . London: Hunt and Clarke. 1827.
Bentham; The
Botany of the Voyage of H.M.S.
Sulphur; under Captain Ed. Belcher.