Edward James Salisbury

Edward James Salisbury

Sir Edward James Salisbury FRS (16 April 1886 – 10 November 1978) was an English botanist and ecologist. He was born in Harpenden, Hertfordshire and graduated in botany from University College London in 1905. In 1913, he obtained a D.Sc. with a thesis on fossil seeds and was appointed a senior lecturer at East London College. He returned to University College London as a senior lecturer, from 1924 as a reader in plant ecology and from 1929 as Quain Professor of botany.

He was director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew from 1943 to 1956. He was responsible for the restoration of the gardens after the Second World War.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 15 March 1933 and won the society’s Royal Medal in 1945 for "his notable contributions to plant ecology and to the study of the British flora generally". In 1936, he was awarded the The Veitch Memorial Medal of the Royal Horticultural Society in acknowledgement of his book The Living Garden (1935), which was enormously popular. In 1939, he received the Commander of the British Empire and in 1946 he was knighted.

At first, his research was focussed on forest ecology, particularly in his native Hertfordshire. Later, he pioneered investigations of seed size and reproductive output of plants in relation to habitat. He also investigated the ecology of garden weeds and of dune plants.