Chrono-Biographical Sketch: Harry H. B. Allan

Some Biogeographers, Evolutionists and Ecologists:
Chrono-Biographical Sketches

Allan, Harry Howard Barton (New Zealand 1882-1957)
botany

Charles Fleming: Dr. Allan, Dr. Moore and Dr. Papenfuss in Auckland during the Pacific Science Congress, Jan. 1949. Reference number PAColl-6883.
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

The most outstanding New Zealand botanist of his time, Harry Allan began his career as a secondary school teacher of agricultural subjects. By the mid 1920s he was collaborating with the noted botanist Leonard Cockayne on important hybridization experiments on plants; with the latter's death in 1934 he assumed a leadership role in the national botanical scene and became involved in a variety of economic botany studies for the DSIR. In this position he was successful not only as an administrator, but also as a researcher on subjects related to pharmacognosy, grasslands ecology, pest plant species, floristics, and botanical taxonomy.

Life Chronology

--born in Nelson, New Zealand, on 27 April 1882.
--1907: hired to teach at Waitaki Boys' High School in Oamaru
--1908: M.A., Auckland University College
--1916: becomes agriculture master at Ashburton High School; made fellow of the Linnean Society of London
--1923: D.Sc.; joins staff of the Feilding Agricultural High School, Feilding, New Zealand
--1928: made a fellow of the New Zealand Institute (later the Royal Society of New Zealand)
--1928: publishes his New Zealand Trees and Shrubs and How to Identify Them
--1928: hired by the Plant Research Station, Palmerston North
--1936: becomes head of the botany section of DSIR
--1940: publishes his A Handbook of the Naturalized Flora of New Zealand
--1941: made vice-president of the Royal Society of New Zealand; receives its Hutton Memorial Medal
--1942: receives the Hector Memorial Medal and Prize of the Royal Society of New Zealand
--1943-1946: president, Royal Society of New Zealand
--1948: retires; is made CBE
--dies at Wellington, New Zealand, on 29 October 1957.

For Additional Information, See:

--An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, Vol. 1 (1966).
--Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, Vol. 175 (1964): 190-191.
--Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Vol. 87 (1959): 107-112.
--Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. [online]

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