Julius Sachs

Q. Why does a German appear at the start of  a website entitled Making British Botany?

A.  Because he inspired Harry Marshall Ward, who changed the face of botany in Britain, not least by helping women become professional botanists.

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In the last third of the 19th century Julius von Sachs was instrumental in forging what became widely known as ‘New Botany’, or what for Harry Marshall Ward was ‘The Cause’.

While British botany in the last third of the 19th century was largely focussed on describing and identifying plants brought from its colonies, in Germany emphasis was being placed on knowledge gained through laboratory experiment. This ‘New Botany’ was evidence-based.

After graduating in 1879, aged 25, Harry Marshall Ward spent two months and completed a semester under the tutelage of ‘The Father of Plant Physiology’, Julius von Sachs, in Würtzburg (Marshall Ward, 1879).

Sachs could be irritable, scornful, and even bitter, yet ‘his assistants felt the cordial warmth, the solicitude for them in the details of the day’ (True, 1933). Marshall Ward too had mixed feelings about Sachs, on the one hand finding him ‘a narrow and intolerant man, who rarely stirred from his laboratory’, on the other being inspired by what was happening in that laboratory.  Writing to Francis Darwin, whose visit to Würtzburg coincided with that of Marshall Ward, the latter reflected, ‘When I think of those happy, happy days we spent in dear old Würzburg, it makes me long to go again’ (Marshall Ward, 1881).

Such was his admiration of Sachs that he translated into English the latter’s great work, Lectures on Physiology (trans.1887), so that others might share Sachs’ writings. Later, as Professor of Botany in Cambridge, Marshall Ward ensured the philosophy of ‘New Botany’ was at the heart of teaching in the university’s new Botany School.

The second reason why Julius von Sachs appears here is that studies published since my book was completed suggest that Marshall Ward may have brought back from Germany something else, equally valuable, and particularly relevant to this website. It was a new attitude to the education of women, particularly to the place of women in the laboratory, which he learned from Sachs.

It appears that in 1871 the abilities of a young Russian woman working in Sachs’ laboratory (illegally since women were officially forbidden in Würtzburg) left a deep impression on Sachs.  He was persuaded that the intelligence and skills of women were similar to those of men and that women should have a legal right to access the university, although he did ask himself whether their education might be better suited to women-only colleges (which did not exist at that time in Germany). Women educated in science would, he thought, help improve society through both their roles as teachers and as mothers (Gimmler, 2005). ‘Ladies that would be able to sense the deep, honest pleasure that the master pieces of the greatest natural scientists provide, in case they understand these texts, would enrich mental health in such a way that it will equal that gained by art and poetry’ (Kutschera & Niklas, 2018).

Sachs extended such principles to his own family. Writing in 1886 to Sydney Vines (who studied with Sachs before Ward’s visit, who had taught the undergraduate Ward in Cambridge, but who had moved to Oxford before Ward was made professor in Cambridge), Sachs made a request; ‘My youngest daughter (18 years old) reminds me it says in our newspapers that Holloway College for Young Ladies has just been opened at Egham near London. Since she tells me she would like to go somewhere for finishing, may I ask you kindly to send me a prospectus; of course it would all depend on what the young ladies are like after completing the course; housewives, bluestockings, governesses, genteel ladies, etc.?’ (James, 1969).

References

Gimmler, H. 2005. The plant physiologist Julius von Sachs and the academic education of women. Wurzburger Medizinhistorische Mitteilungen, 24, 415-24. (English summary online).

James, W.O. 1969. Julius Sachs and the nineteenth-century renaissance of botany. Endeavour, 28, 60-64.

Kutschera, U. & Niklas, K. J. 2018. Julius von Sachs’ forgotten 1897-article: sexuality and gender in plants vs. humans. Signalling & Behaviour, 13, e1489671 (online).

True, R.H. 1933. Julius von Sachs, the Man and the Teacher. Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, 60, 335-340.

Marshall Ward, H. 1879.  Letter to Edward Behrens (4 September). Marshall Ward Archives; RBG, Kew.

Marshall Ward, H. 1881. Letter to Francis Darwin, from Peradeniya (26 March). Marshall Ward Archives, RBG, Kew.