Some Biogeographers, Evolutionists and Ecologists:
Chrono-Biographical Sketches

Turrill, William Bertram (England 1890-1961)
botany

After a somewhat slow start as an assistant at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, Turrill's career accelerated after his war service assignment left him an opportunity to gain a superior knowledge of the plant life of the Balkan Peninsula (the experience led both to his Ph.D. dissertation and his best known book the following year). At Kew Turrill was an inventive force, greatly expanding the herbarium collections, initiating facilities for experimental work, and setting up a seed collection and specialized herbaria. His own research focused on genetics and ecology, and yielded a steady stream of writings of both a technical and popular nature.

--born in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England, on 14 June 1890.
--1909: hired as temporary assistant in the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
--1914: hired as permanent assistant in the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
--1915: B.Sc. in botany, University of London
--1916-1918: serves in the Royal Army Medical Corps in World War I (primarily in Macedonia); returns to Kew afterward
--1918-1939: gives evening classes at Chelsea Polytechnic
--1922: M.Sc. in botany, University of London
--1928: Ph.D. in botany, University of London
--1929: publishes his The Plant-life of the Balkan Peninsula
--1946: made keeper of the herbarium and library, Kew; retires from this position in 1957
--1948-1961: editor, Botanical Magazine
--1950-1951: president, British Ecological Society
--1953: receives the Veitch memorial gold medal of the Royal Horticultural Society
--1955: receives the OBE (Order of the British Empire)
--1958: receives the gold medal of the Linnean Society
--1958: vice-president, the Linnean Society
--1958: made a fellow of the Royal Society
--dies at Richmond, Surrey, England, on 15 December 1961.
--1963: posthumously publishes his biography of Joseph Dalton Hooker

--Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 55 (2004).
--Taxonomic Literature, Vol. 6 (1986).
--Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, Vol. 17 (1971).