Arthur Roy Clapham facts for kids

Arthur Roy Clapham (born May 24, 1904 – died December 18, 1990) was an important British botanist. A botanist is a scientist who studies plants. He was born in Norwich, England.

Clapham is famous for two main things. First, he helped create the word "ecosystem" in the 1930s. An ecosystem is a community of living things and their environment, like a forest or a pond. Second, he helped write the Flora of the British Isles. This was the first complete guide to all the plants growing in Britain. He also taught at Oxford University and was a professor at the University of Sheffield.

Early Life and Learning

Arthur Roy Clapham grew up in Norwich. His father was a school teacher. Arthur was the oldest of three children. He went to the City of Norwich School.

In 1922, he started studying at Downing College, Cambridge. He was a very good student and won a special prize for botany. After getting his first degree, he continued to study plant physiology. This is the study of how plants work and grow.

Clapham then worked at the Rothamsted Experimental Station. This is a famous agricultural research center. There, he worked with a scientist named Ronald Fisher. Fisher was a pioneer in statistical analysis. This means using math to understand data. Clapham learned from Fisher and used statistics to figure out how to estimate wheat harvests. He designed a way to guess how much wheat crops would produce using small samples.

While at Rothamsted, he met Brenda Stoessiger, who would later become his wife. She was also a research student. In 1929, Clapham earned his PhD from Cambridge University.

His Career

In 1930, Clapham started teaching botany at the University of Oxford. He worked closely with another important botanist, Arthur Tansley.

In 1944, Clapham moved to the University of Sheffield. He became the head of the Botany Department there. He stayed at Sheffield until he retired in 1969. While at Sheffield, he also served as a leader for the university.

Clapham was also the President of the British Ecological Society from 1954 to 1956. This society is for scientists who study how living things interact with their environment. He was also President of the Linnean Society from 1967 to 1970. The Linnean Society is one of the oldest and most respected groups for natural history.

Awards and Honors

Arthur Roy Clapham received many awards for his work.

• In 1949, he became a Fellow of the Linnean Society.
• In 1959, he was chosen as a Fellow of the Royal Society. This is a very high honor for scientists in the UK.
• He received the Linnean Medal in 1972. This medal is given for great achievements in botany or zoology.
• In 1969, he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). This is an honor given by the British Queen or King.
• He also received honorary doctorates from the University of Aberdeen and the University of Sheffield in 1970.

His Family Life

Arthur Clapham married Brenda North Stoessiger in 1933. They had four children. Their first child, John, sadly passed away when he was just over a year old in 1935. They later had three more children: daughters Elizabeth and Jennifer, and a son, David. Brenda Clapham passed away in 1985. Arthur Clapham died in 1990.

What He Contributed

Clapham started his career studying how plants function. But he made many contributions to different areas of science:

• Sampling Design: He developed ways to take small samples to accurately estimate things, like crop yields.
• Ecology: He helped define and popularize the term "ecosystem".
• Plant Systematics: This is about classifying and naming plants. His most famous work here was the Flora of the British Isles. This book helped people identify all the different plants in Britain. He worked on this book with T.G. Tutin and E. F. Warburg. It was first published in 1952, with new versions in 1962 and 1987.
• Palaeoecology: This is the study of ancient environments and how living things interacted with them long ago.

He also helped create the Biological Flora of the British Isles, which is an ongoing series of detailed plant descriptions. In 1959, he published the Excursion Flora of the British Isles, a smaller guide for people exploring nature. He also edited the Flora of Derbyshire in 1969.

Books He Wrote

• (with W.O. James) The biology of flowers. Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1935.
• (with T.G. Tutin and E. F. Warburg), Flora of the British Isles. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press (first edition 1952, second edition 1962 and third edition 1987 with Warburg replaced by D.M. Moore).
• (with T.G. Tutin and E.F. Warburg) Excursion flora of the British Isles. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press 1959.
• Flora of Derbyshire. Derby Museum and Art Gallery. 1969.
• The Oxford book of trees, (illustrations by B.E. Nicholson). London : Oxford University Press, 1975.