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Sir Francis Darwin (16 August 1848 – 19 September 1925) was a British botany. He was the third son of the naturalist and scientist Charles Darwin.
He then went to Trinity College, Cambridge, initially studying mathematics, then changing to , graduating in 1870. He then went to study medicine at St George's Medical School, London, earning an MB in 1875, but did not practice medicine.
Darwin was married three times and widowed twice. First, he married Amy Richenda Ruck in 1874, but she died in 1876 four days after the birth of their son Bernard Darwin, who was later to become a golf writer. In September 1883, he married Ellen Wordsworth Crofts (1856–1903) and they had a daughter Frances Cornford (1886–1960), a poet who married the poet Francis Cornford and became known under her married name. His third wife was Florence Henrietta Fisher, daughter of Herbert William Fisher and widow of Frederic William Maitland, whom he married in 1913, the year in which he was Knight Bachelor. Her sister Adeline Fisher was the first wife of Darwin's double first cousin once removed Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Francis Darwin worked with his father on experiments dealing with plant movements, specifically phototropism. They co-authored The Power of Movement in Plants (1880) and Francis Darwin published a second expanded edition of Insectivorous Plants (1888) after his father's death. Their experiments showed that the cotyledon of a young grass seedling directs its growth toward the light by comparing the responses of seedlings with covered and uncovered coleoptiles. These observations would later lead to the discovery of auxins.
Darwin was nominated by his father to the Linnean Society of London in 1875, and was elected as a Fellow of the Society on 2 December 1875."2 Dec. 1875. Darwin, Francis, M.B. Down, Beckenham, Kent." in: The Linnean Society of London: List of the Linnean Society of London, 1876. London: Printed by Taylor and Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. p.10. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 8 June 1882, the same year in which his father died. Darwin edited The Autobiography of Charles Darwin (1887), and produced some books of letters from the correspondence of Charles Darwin; The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887) and More Letters of Charles Darwin (1905). He also edited Thomas Huxley's On the Reception of the Origin of Species (1887).
Darwin was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1909. That same year, Cambridge University awarded him an honorary doctorate (DSc). He also received honorary doctorates from Dublin, Liverpool, Sheffield, Brussels, St Andrews, Upsala, and Prague. He was knighted in 1913.
He is buried in Cambridge.A Guide to Churchill College, Cambridge: text by Dr. Mark Goldie, pages 62 and 63 (2009) His daughter, Frances Cornford, was later buried with him.
He married his second wife, Ellen Wordsworth Crofts, in 1883. She was a Fellow and lecturer at Newnham College. She was also a member of the Ladies Dining Society in Cambridge. She died in 1903, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Andrew's Church, Girton.
In 1913, he married his third wife, Lady Florence Henrietta Fisher, the widow of Frederic William Maitland. She died in 1920 and is interred in the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground, Cambridge, opposite the grave of Sir Francis Darwin and his daughter Frances Cornford.
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