Frederick Blackman

Frederick Blackman
Born
Frederick Frost Blackman

(1866-07-25)25 July 1866
Lambeth, London
Died25 January 1947(1947-01-25) (aged 80)
Resting placeParish of the Ascension Burial Ground
NationalityBritish
Alma materUniversity of Cambridge
SpouseElsie
AwardsRoyal Medal
Scientific career
FieldsBotany

Frederick Frost Blackman FRS[1] (25 July 1866 – 30 January 1947) was a British plant physiologist.[2]

Frederick Blackman was born in Lambeth, London to a doctor. He studied medicine at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, graduating MA. In the subsequent years, he studied natural sciences at the University of Cambridge and was awarded DSc.

He conducted research on plant physiology, in particular photosynthesis, in Cambridge until his retirement in 1936. Gabrielle Matthaei was his assistant until 1905; her laboratory work underpinned much of the theory of FF Blackman’s Law of Limiting Factors (below).  Their collaboration ended in 1905 when Gabrielle married Albert Howard, thereafter supporting his work as Imperial Economic Botanist to the Government of India.[3]

FF Blackman was elected in May 1906 a Fellow of the Royal Society,[1] his candidature citation reading "Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. Ex-Lecturer and now Reader in Botany in the University." In 1921 he was awarded the Royal Medal and in 1923 delivered the Croonian lecture.

In 1917, at the age of 51, FF Blackman surprised friends and colleagues when he married Elsie Chick (age 35). He became thereby the brother-in-law of his old friend and fellow botanist, Arthur Tansley.  In 1903 Tansley had married Elsie’s sister, Edith Chick.  FF was Tansley's best man.[4] The two men, and FF’s brother, Vernon Blackman (another botanist), had become friends while students at Cambridge.  As young graduates working in London, Tansley and Vernon had been flatmates. The Blackman family completed half a century at the forefront of British botany through the work of Vernon’s son, Geoffrey E. Blackman, an applied botanist who served as Secretary of the Biology War Committee (WWII).

FF Blackman was buried at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge, with his wife Elsie (1882 – 1967).

  1. ^ a b Briggs, G. E. (1948). "Frederick Frost Blackman. 1866-1947". Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society. 5 (16): 651–658. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1948.0003. JSTOR 768762. S2CID 85200562.
  2. ^ Anon (1947). "Frederick Frost Blackman July 25, 1866-January 30, 1947". Plant Physiology. 22 (3): ii–. doi:10.1104/pp.22.3.ii. PMC 405861.
  3. ^ Robinson, Pat (2019). Sir Albert Howard. Shropshire Lad and Champion of Sustainable Farming (1st ed.). Bishops Castle: The Albert Howard Society. pp. 34–38. ISBN 978-1-83853-045-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  4. ^ Ayres, Peter (2012). Shaping Ecology. The Life of Arthur Tansley (1st ed.). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 48–60. ISBN 978-0-470-67156-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)