John Percival FLS (1863–1949) was an English botanist and professor of agricultural botany, known for his research on the genera ''

Triticum Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeologica ...

'' and ''

Aegilops ''Aegilops'' is a genus of Eurasian and North American plants in the grass family, Poaceae. They are known generally as goatgrasses.

'', as well as the

taxonomy of wheat During 10,000 years of cultivation, numerous forms of wheat, many of them hybrids, have developed under a combination of artificial and natural selection. This diversity has led to much confusion in the naming of wheats. This article explains how ...

Biography

After education from 1868 to 1877 at the National school in

Aysgarth Aysgarth is a village and civil parish in Wensleydale, in the Richmondshire district of North Yorkshire, England. The village is in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, about south-west of Richmond and west of the county town of Northallerton. ...

, John Percival, a Quaker, was employed at the York Glass Works, owned at that time by a Quaker family named Spence. Percival worked there from 1877 to 1884. Mrs T. A. (Charlotte) Cotton, a member of the Spence family, endowed him with a scholarship. He matriculated on 13 October 1884 at

St John's College, Cambridge St John's College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge founded by the House of Tudor, Tudor matriarch Lady Margaret Beaufort. In constitutional terms, the college is a charitable corpo ...

. He graduated there with B.A. in 1887, M.A. in 1891, and Sc.D. in 1922. From 1894 to 1903 he was a professor of botany at the Agricultural College at Wye in

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

. At

University College, Reading The University of Reading is a public university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as University College, Reading, a University of Oxford extension college. The institution received the power to grant its own degrees in 192 ...

, he was director of the Agricultural Department from 1903 to 1907 and professor of agricultural botany from 1907 to 1932. The Linnean Society elected him a Fellow in 1893 and a vice-president for 1926–1927.

William Broadhurst Brierley William Broadhurst Brierley (1889–1963) was an English mycologist. He is known particularly for his work on "grey mould". Life Brierley had a deprived background, and was brought up in a poor district of Manchester. At 14 he became a pupil-teach ...

was his successor in the professorship from which Percival retired in 1932. Around 1928, Piotr M. Zhukovsky () sent Percival a possibly complete collection of the species of the genus ''Aegilops''. During WWII the ''Aegilops'' collection at Leningrad was destroyed, and John Jones in the late 1950s was able to send a complete set of ''Aegilops'' species to the USSR. Starting around 1927, Percival received numerous desiccated or carbonised samples of cereal grains from tombs or other archaeological sites in Egypt, the Near East, and western Asia. The samples and Percival's identifications were important in developing archaeobotany at the University of Reading. On 17 August 1896 he married Ethel Elizabeth Hope-Johnstone. Alan Vivian Percival (born 1899) was their only child who survived to adulthood. Upon John Percival's death he was survived by his widow and son.

Legacy

According to Laura A. Morrison, the modern era of wheat taxonomy began with three works: ''Die Geschichte der Kultivierten Getreide'' (1913) by August Schulz (1862–1922), ''Neuere Wege und Ziele der botanischen Systematik, erläutert am Beispiele unserer Getreidearten'' (1913) by

Albert Thellung Albert Thellung (12 May 1881 – 26 June 1928) was a Swiss botanist. He was a professor at the University of Zürich. The Austrian botanist Otto Stapf named the plant genus ''Thellungia'' of the grass family, Poaceae, after him, and Otto E ...

, and ''The Wheat Plant'' (1921) by Percival. On the 12th and 13 July 1999, the University of Reading's School of Plant Sciences, in collaboration with the Linnean Society, held a symposium to celebrate Percival's life and work.

Selected publications

* * * * (2nd edition, 1948)

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Percival, John 1863 births 1949 deaths 19th-century British botanists 20th-century British botanists Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge Academics of the University of Reading Fellows of the Linnean Society of London