Jack Hawkes (botanist)

For persons of a similar name, see John Hawkes (disambiguation).

John Gregory Hawkes OBE FLS (27 June 1915 in Bristol – 6 September 2007 in Reading) was a British botanist, Mason Professor of Botany at the University of Birmingham.[1][2]

He was a student at Cambridge University Botany School where obtained his Ph.D. (1941) and Sc.D. (1957).[3]

He specialised in studying the taxonomy of wild potato species (Solanum sect. Petota), identified sources of resistance to the potato cyst nematode and played a role in establishing programs to maintain agricultural biodiversity.[4][5]

He was awarded the OBE in the 1994 Birthday Honours.[6] In 1985 he was awarded the Linnean Medal for Botany by the Linnean Society.[3]

He treated much of the Solanaceae for Flora Europaea, started the Solanaceae Newsletter and organised the first Symposium on the Solanaceae.[3]

At Birmingham he started the M.Sc. course in the Conservation and Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources, which trained international students.[3]

Working with Birmingham Natural History Society and Dorothy Cadbury he produced "A computer - mapped flora and study of the county of Warwickshire" (1971). This was an innovative use of computers at the time using Punched tape storage, which led to problems later on when the computer department updated their system and the old tapes had to be read slowly so as not to damage them.[7]

In 1977, Argentinian botanist Armando Theodoro Hunziker named a genus of plants from South America, Hawkesiophyton(belonging to the family Solanaceae) after Hawkes.[8]

The standard author abbreviation Hawkes is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[9]

Selected publications

  • A computer-mapped flora, a study of the County of Warwickshire. Cadbury, D. A., Hawkes, J. G., Readett, R. C. (1971). Birmingham Natural History and Philosophical Society (Birmingham, England), Academic Press. ISBN 9780123333605
  • A bibliography of plant genetic resources. Hawkes, J. G., Williams, John Trevor, Hanson, Jean (1976). Rome: International Board for Plant Genetic Resources.
  • The Biology and taxonomy of the Solanaceae. Hawkes, J. G., Lester, R. N., Skelding, A. D. (1979). Linnean Society of London, Academic Press. ISBN 9780123331502
  • The potato: evolution, biodiversity and genetic resources. Hawkes, J. G. (1990). London: Belhaven. ISBN 9781852930455

References

  1. ^ "Jack Hawkes: Plant Collector, Researcher, Mentor and Visionary". Crop Wild Relative Conservation and Use. CABI. 2008. pp. 18–20. ISBN 978-1-84593-307-4.
  2. ^ Lawrence Goldman (7 March 2013). "Hawkes, John Gregory". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2005-2008. Oxford University Press. pp. 499–500. ISBN 978-0-19-967154-0.
  3. ^ a b c d "Linnean Medal for Botany". The Linnean. 1 (4): 26–28. January 1985.
  4. ^ "Professor Jack Hawkes". The Independent. 18 October 2007. Retrieved 6 April 2014.
  5. ^ "Professor Jack Hawkes". The Daily Telegraph. 21 September 2007. Retrieved 6 April 2014.
  6. ^ "No. 53696". The London Gazette (Supplement). 10 June 1994. p. 12.
  7. ^ Jackson, Mike (5 February 2012). "Jack Hawkes – a plant genetic resources pioneer". Mike Jackson.
  8. ^ "Hawkesiophyton Hunz. | Plants of the World Online | Kew Science". Plants of the World Online. Retrieved 26 May 2021.
  9. ^ International Plant Names Index.  Hawkes.
  • Pistrick, K.; Hammer, K. (2007). "John G. Hawkes (1915–2007)". Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution. 54 (8): 1635. doi:10.1007/s10722-007-9291-9.
  • Richard N. Lester (2005). "Book Review - Hunting the Wild Potato in the South American Andes: Memories of the British Empire Potato Collecting Expedition to South America 1938–1939". Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution. 52: 483–488. doi:10.1007/s10722-005-8253-3.
  • 'HAWKES, Prof. John Gregory', Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2008 accessed 30 May 2011


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