Abstract

Kate Hooper has just published her first book, Who Was Henslow?, a biography of John Stevens Henslow. This year marks the bicentenary of Henslow being appointed Professor of Botany in Cambridge, in 1825.

Kate enjoyed a 37-year career as an NHS doctor. However, her love of plants begun with her own small patch of garden aged five in Hertfordshire, developing her own garden to studying Garden Design and horticulture part-time at Writtle and West Anglia Colleges respectively. Having founded Perfect Circle Designs in 2002, she designed and landscaped gardens in the UK and France with her business partner. She enjoys gardening with her husband in the mild dry climate of South Cambridgeshire.

Following the birth of her first grandson, Kate hung up her stethoscope in 2022. She was delighted to be accepted both as a Volunteer Garden Guide and Herbarium Volunteer at Cambridge University Botanic Garden. It was then she began to ask questions about Henslow. Why did he take on the Chair of Botany when he was already Professor of Mineralogy? How did he manage to persuade the University to buy 40 acres of land in central Cambridge for the study of botany? Why did he move his family to a small parish in Suffolk, before the new Botanic Garden opened? Despite a lifelong desire to travel why did he forego the chance to join the Beagle voyage of 1831? (He let his most famous student, Charles Darwin, travel instead.) As a devout Christian, how did he react to Darwin’s famous book, On the Origin of the Species?