Cotton , Arthur Disbrowe , 1879-1962 , mycologist

Arthur Disbrowe Cotton was born on 15th January, 1879 in London. He was educated at King's College School, London, which is where he began to develop his interest in plants. Cotton attended a 3 year course in horticulture directly after school before embarking on a 3 year course on botany at the Royal College of Science, London. It was here that Cotton became attracted to and then specialised in fungi, algae and lichens. His first professional post came in 1902 when he was appointed as Demonstrator and Assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester, where he specialised in lichens and marine algae. It was also at this time he became a member of the British Mycological Society; a membership that lasted the rest of his life. In 1904, Cotton accepted a post at Kew in the Cryptogamic section under Dr George Massee, where he remained for the rest of his career, save for 2 years during the First World War, which was spent under the Board of Agriculture, undertaking research in plant pathology to assist the Food Production Department in the protection of food crops, particularly potatoes, against fungus diseases. Before this appointment, from 1904 to 1915, Cotton concentrated on marine algae from a taxonomic and ecological perspective. This culminated in seven separate trips between 1910 and 1911 to Clare Island, a small island off the west coast of Ireland, from which Cotton published his findings in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy in 1912.

It was on 1st March 1922 that Arthur Cotton succeeded Otto Von Stapf to become Keeper of the Herbarium and Library at Kew, where he remained until his retirement on 31st January 1946. Cotton was interested cultivated species, such as the tree Senecios, which were found by Cotton during his trip to Mount Kilimanjaro, East Africa in 1929-1930 and of which some samples of the tree were collected to be planted at Kew. Cotton's ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro, 1929-1930, with Dr A S Hitchcock, the US Agrostologist was one of a number of trips Cotton made as Keeper at Kew. Many of this trips included making acquaintances with botanical institutions on the Continent, including Berlin (1927, 1931), Copenhagen (1931), Paris (1935), Prague (1927) and Vienna (1927). Cotton attained the Keepership at Kew at a time when there was a revival of interest in plant taxonomy and plant-nomenclature, which meant many undeveloped countries called on Kew for assistance in naming botanical specimens. Another consequence of these renewed interests, meant enormous amounts of un-mounted and unclassified material, some hundreds of thousands specimens, had accumulated in the Herbarium during the previous 50 years before Cotton's appointment. Credit needs to be paid to Cotton, in that during his tenure as Keeper at Kew, he managed to add 900,000 sheets of specimens to the collections, through the careful guidance and gentle encouragement Cotton paid to his staff.

Cotton was also an active member of many societies and committees outside his work at Kew, which included; joint vice-chairman of the Lily Group Committee of the RHS 1935 to 1962; a member of the Lily Group's editorial committee 1953-1962; the British Mycological Society; a Fellow of the Linnaean Society 1960-1962; president of Linnaean Society 1943-46, Vice-President 1927-28 and 1946-47; Council member of Association of Applied Biologists 1917-21; Vice-President from1923-24; member of the British Ecological Society and President of the Kew Guild, 1940-41. During his life, Cotton was also awarded with the Lyttel Lily Cup in honour of his valuable contributions to the knowledge of the genus Lilium in 1944 by the Council of the PHS; the Victoria Medal of Honour by the RHS for Cotton's services to botany and horticulture and an OBE in 1934 for his contributions to botany. After the death of his wife Enid Mary Jesson, he lived with his daughter, where he died on 27th December 1962.