Alfred Daniel Hall

Last updated

Alfred Daniel Hall
Alfred Daniel Hall.png

Sir Alfred Daniel Hall, KCB FRS , [1] sometimes known as Sir Daniel Hall (22 June 1864 - 5 July 1942) was a British agricultural educator and researcher who founded Wye College. [2]

Contents

Hall was born in Rochdale, Lancashire where his father Edwin Hall was a flannel manufacturer. As a young boy he interacted with a naturalist group where one member collected mosses while another collected fossils and in time he too began to collect fossils in Rochdale, accompanying the Borough Surveyor S.S. Platt. He attended a private school of Theodore B. Pickles and received a scholarship to Manchester Grammar School in 1876. He studied science under Francis Jones and received a Brackenbury Scholarship at Balliol College, Oxford, joining in 1881. He received a first in natural science (chemistry) in 1884 and became a schoolmaster at Blairlodge Academy followed by teaching at Hulme Grammar School, Manchester and in 1888, Senior Science Master at King Edward's School, Birmingham.

He married Mary Brooks, sister of a friend, while teaching at Birmingham. In 1891 he joined the University Extension Board and he sought to establish an agriculture college for which he selected Wye and through E.J. Halsey, the chairman of the County Council, space and resources were allocated for the establishment of the Wye College. The founding staff included Herbert Henry Cousins, chemist, John Percival, botanist, Frank Braybrooke Smith, agriculturist, and F.V. Theobald, entomologist. Hall handled the teaching of chemistry. The college was formally opened in 1894 and had fourteen students. In 1902 he was persuaded to leave Wye and help rejuvenate research at the Rothamsted Laboratory. In 1912 he left Rothamsted to work with the Development Commission. In 1919 he became a director of the John Innes Horticultural Institution and was also a part-time advisor for the Ministry of Agriculture. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1909 [1] and made KCB in 1918. [1]

The standard author abbreviation A.D.Hall is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name. [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rothamsted Research</span> UK agricultural research institution

Rothamsted Research, previously known as the Rothamsted Experimental Station and then the Institute of Arable Crops Research, is one of the oldest agricultural research institutions in the world, having been founded in 1843. It is located at Harpenden in the English county of Hertfordshire and is a registered charity under English law.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Yates</span> English pioneer of 20th-century statistics

Frank Yates FRS was one of the pioneers of 20th-century statistics.

Sir Thomas Richard Edmund SouthwoodGOM DL FRS was a British biologist, professor of zoology and vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford. A specialist on entomology, he developed the field of insect ecology and the development of study techniques. He wrote a landmark textbook on Ecological Methods that went into numerous editions. He also was well known for developing the field of entomology through mentorship of a circle of researchers at Silwood Park.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wye College</span> Former college in Kent, England

The College of St Gregory and St Martin at Wye, commonly known as Wye College, was an education and research institution in the village of Wye, Kent. In 1447, Cardinal John Kempe founded his chantry there which also educated local children. As of 2020, it still includes a rare, complete example of medieval chantry college buildings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Frankland</span> English chemist

Sir Edward Frankland, was an English chemist. He was one of the originators of organometallic chemistry and introduced the concept of combining power or valence. An expert in water quality and analysis, he was a member of the second royal commission on the pollution of rivers, and studied London's water quality for decades. He also studied luminous flames and the effects of atmospheric pressure on dense ignited gas, and was one of the discoverers of helium.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Henry Gilbert</span> English chemist

Sir Joseph Henry Gilbert was an English chemist, noteworthy for his long career spent improving the methods of practical agriculture. Along with J.B. Lawes, he conducted experiments at Rothamstead for forty years. One of the key findings of Lawes and Gilbert was that cereal crops took up nitrogen from the soil, contrary to the ideas of Justus von Liebig who held that it was obtained only from the air. Their work made Rothamstead a leading centre of agricultural research. Gilbert became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1860.

Sir Kenneth Mather CBE FRS was a British geneticist and botanist. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1949, and won its Darwin Medal in 1964. He was the second vice chancellor of the University of Southampton, serving from 1965 to 1971. He was instrumental in persuading the University Grants Committee to establish a new Medical School at the university.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E. John Russell</span> British agricultural scientist

Sir Edward John Russell was a British soil chemist, agriculture scientist, and director of Rothamsted Experimental Station from 1912 to 1943. He was responsible for hiring R A Fisher for statistical research at Rothamsted and driven by concerns over a lack of international information exchange about agriculture, he initiated the Imperial Agricultural Bureaux, which later became the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux.

David John Finney, was a British statistician and Professor Emeritus of Statistics at the University of Edinburgh. He was Director of the Agricultural Research Council's Unit of Statistics from 1954 to 1984 and a former President of the Royal Statistical Society and of the Biometric Society. He was a pioneer in the development of systematic monitoring of drugs for detection of adverse reactions. He turned 100 in January 2017 and died on 12 November 2018 at the age of 101 following a short illness.

Sir William Gammie Ogg FRSE LLD (1891–1979) was a Scottish horticultural scientist and Director of Rothamsted Experimental Station

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Balderstone Technology College</span> Grammar school in Balderstone, Greater Manchester, England

Balderstone Technology College was a school in the Balderstone district of the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale in Greater Manchester, England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John A. Pickett</span> British chemist (born 1945)

John Anthony Pickett is a British chemist who is noted for his work on insect pheromones. Pickett is Professor of Biological Chemistry in the School of Chemistry at Cardiff University. He previously served as the Michael Elliott Distinguished Research Fellow at Rothamsted Research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Algernon Thomas</span> New Zealand university professor, geologist, biologist and educationalist

Sir Algernon Phillips Withiel Thomas was a New Zealand university professor, geologist, biologist and educationalist. He was born in Birkenhead, Cheshire, England in 1857 and died in Auckland, New Zealand in 1937. He is best known for his early research (1880–83) into the life cycle of the sheep liver fluke, a discovery he shared with the German zoologist Rudolf Leuckart, his report on the eruption of Tarawera (1888) and his contribution to the development of New Zealand pedagogy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Winifred Brenchley</span> British botanist

Winifred Elsie Brenchley OBE, DSc (Lond), FLS, FRES (1883–1953), an agricultural botanist who worked at the Rothamsted Research Station. Along with Katherine Warington, she demonstrated the role of boron as an essential micronutrient for plants. She was the first woman in the UK to break into the male-dominated sphere of agricultural science. She has been described as "perhaps Britain's leading authority on weeds in the early twentieth century".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Department of Chemistry, University of Manchester</span>

The Department of Chemistry at the University of Manchester is one of the largest departments of Chemistry in the United Kingdom, with over 600 undergraduate and more than 200 postgraduate research students.

Sir Frederick William Keeble, CBE, FRS was a British biologist, academic, and scientific adviser, who specialised in botany. He was Sherardian Professor of Botany at the University of Oxford from 1920 to 1927 and Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institution from 1937 to 1941.

Sir Harry Work Melville, was a British chemist, academic, and academic administrator, who specialised in polymer research. He spent his early career in academia as a lecturer and researcher, before moving into administration as a civil servant and university college head.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Simonsen</span> English organic chemist

Sir John Lionel Simonsen was an English organic chemist who worked in India. He contributed to organic syntheses and studied the chemistry of many plant extracts. He was knighted in 1949.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leslie Fowden</span> British organic chemist and plant scientist

Sir Leslie Fowden (1925—2008) was a British organic chemist and plant scientist, notable for his pioneering research on phytochemistry and plant amino acids, as well as for his role in promoting agricultural research in the UK.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Russell, E. J. (1942). "Alfred Daniel Hall. 1864–1942". Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society . 4 (11): 228–250. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1942.0018. S2CID   161964820.
  2. Brassley, Paul (2004). "Hall, Sir (Alfred) Daniel (1864–1942)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33647.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  3. International Plant Names Index.  A.D.Hall.

Works

Government offices
Preceded by Permanent Secretary of the
Board of Agriculture and Fisheries

1917–1919
Succeeded by
Sir Francis Floud
(as Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries)