Robert Brown

Robert Brown (born December 21, 1773, Montrose, Angus, Scotland—died June 10, 1858, London, England) was a Scottish botanist best known for his descriptions of cell nuclei and of the continuous motion of minute particles in solution, which came to be called Brownian motion. In addition, he recognized the fundamental distinction between gymnosperms (conifers and their allies) and angiosperms (flowering plants), and he improved plant taxonomy by establishing and defining new families and genera. He contributed substantially to the knowledge of plant morphology, embryology, and biogeography, in particular by his original work on the flora of Australia.

Brown was the son of a Scottish Episcopalian clergyman. He studied medicine at the Universities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh and spent five years in the British army serving in Ireland as an ensign and assistant surgeon (1795–1800). A visit to London in 1798 brought Brown to the notice of Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society. Banks recommended Brown to the Admiralty for the post of naturalist aboard a ship, the Investigator, for a surveying voyage along the northern and southern coasts of Australia under the command of Matthew Flinders.

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Brown sailed with the expedition in July 1801. The Investigator reached King George Sound, Western Australia, an area of great floral richness and diversity, in December 1801. Until June 1803, and while the ship circumnavigated Australia, Brown made extensive plant collections. Returning to England in October 1805, Brown devoted his time to classifying the approximately 3,900 species he had gathered, almost all of which were new to science.

The results of Brown’s Australian trip were partially published in 1810 in Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen, a classic of systematic botany and his major work. Though the publication laid the foundations for Australian botany while refining the prevailing systems of plant classification, Brown was disappointed by its small sale and published only one volume. Brown’s close observation of minute but significant details was also shown in his publication on the plant family Proteaceae, in which he demonstrated how the study of pollen grain characters could assist in the classification of plants into new genera. In 1810 Banks appointed Brown as his librarian and in 1820 bequeathed him his extensive botanical collection and library. Brown transferred them to the British Museum in 1827, when he became keeper of its newly formed botanical department.

In 1828 Brown published a pamphlet, A Brief Account of Microscopical Observations…, about his observations of the “rapid oscillatory motion” of a variety of microscopic particles. He recorded that, after noticing moving particles (now known to be amyloplasts, organelles involved with starch synthesis) suspended within living pollen grains of Clarkia pulchella, he examined both living and dead pollen grains of many other plants and observed a similar motion in all of them. Brown then experimented with organic and inorganic substances reduced to a fine powder and suspended in water. His work revealed the random movement to be a general property of matter in that state, and the phenomenon has long been known as Brownian motion in his honour.

In 1831, while investigating the fertilization mechanisms of plants in the Orchidaceae and Asclepiadaceae families, he noted the existence of a structure within the cells of orchids, as well as many other plants, that he termed the “nucleus” of the cell. Although his were not the first observations of cell nuclei, his designation of the term has persisted, and his discovery contributed to the evolution of cell theory. His observations testify to the range and depth of his pioneering microscopical work and his ability to draw far-reaching conclusions from isolated data or selected structures.

Brown was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1810 and served as president of the Linnean Society from 1849 to 1853. A number of Australian plant species, including Brown’s banksia (Banksia brownii) and Brown’s box (Eucalyptus brownii), are named after him.