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Lilian Hawker

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Lilian Edith Hawker (19 May 1908 – 5 February 1991)[1] was a British mycologist, known for her work on fungal physiology, particularly spore production. She was an expert on British truffles, and also published in the fields of plant physiology and plant pathology. She was also known for her contributions to education in mycology. Most of her career was spent at the botany department of the Imperial College of Science and Technology (1932–45) and the University of Bristol (1945–73), where she held the chair in mycology (1965–73) and was dean of the science faculty (1970–73). She served as president of the British Mycological Society, and was elected an honorary member of that society and of the Mycological Society of America. She published an introduction to fungi and two books on fungal physiology, of which Physiology of Fungi (1950) was among the first to survey the field, and also co-edited two microbiology textbooks.

Lilian Edith Hawker c. 1955

Early life and education

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Hawker was born in Reading, Berkshire in 1908.[1][2] Her father was a schoolteacher. She was educated at Reading School[2] and went up to the University of Reading in 1925, obtaining a BSc in botany (1929) followed by a MSc in plant geotropism (1931). She was taught by Walter Stiles.[3] Her first research paper appeared in 1930, based on work she completed as an undergraduate on reproduction in the yew tree.[1][2]

Career

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Hawker briefly researched plant physiology at the University of Manchester (1931–32).[1][2] In 1932, after taking a course by the mycologist William Brown, she shifted her focus to fungal physiology.[1][2] Around this time, Walter Buddin at Reading also interested her (and Terence Ingold) in collecting fungi in the wild,[4][5] a lifelong pursuit. Hawker joined Brown's group at the botany department of the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London that year, becoming a research assistant (1933), and rising to demonstrator (1934) and assistant lecturer in mycology and pathology (1937).[1][2] Her research work was acknowledged in the award of PhD (1935) and DSc degrees (1944) from the University of London. Her career was interrupted by the Second World War; she remained at Imperial's London site teaching under difficult conditions,[1] while Brown and others from the department moved to Slough.[6] Michael J. Carlile comments on her relatively slow promotion at Imperial, despite being highly active in both research and teaching, speculating that it might have been due to her not having contacts.[2]

In 1945 she was appointed lecturer at the University of Bristol, rising to reader in mycology (1948) and holding the chair in mycology from 1965,[1] one of the early women to hold a chair at the university.[1][7] In 1970–73, she served as the science faculty's dean.[2] Bristol's first to be a woman.[8] Her colleagues included Carlile and Michael F. Madelin.[2][9] After her retirement in 1973, she held an emeritus professorship,[1] She participated in the university's studies of proposals for a Severn Barrage including as co-editor of the report.[2]

A "conscientious",[2] "enthusiastic and committed"[1] teacher, Hawker's contributions to university-level education in mycology have been described as "impressive".[2] She served on the British Mycological Society's committee investigating this topic in the 1940s.[10] She helped to found the University of Bristol's degree course in microbiology, which under her influence included mycology, and co-edited two microbiology textbooks which included fungi. She visited the United States in 1965, investigating how practical laboratory work – a particular enthusiasm of hers – fit into university-level education.[1]

Hawker served as president of the British Mycological Society in 1955, and was also elected an honorary member of the society (1975),[10] as well as of the Mycological Society of America (1966).[11] In 1966, she organised Bristol's Colston Symposium on the topic of "The Fungal Spore", which founded the International Fungus Spore Symposium series.[1][2] The following symposium (1974) in Utah was dedicated to her, as well as the American plant pathologist David Gottlieb, and in 1988, Transactions of the British Mycological Society honoured her reaching the age of eighty.[1]

Research and writings

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Hawker's initial research was in the field of plant physiology. She studied geotropism, the way in which plants respond to gravity, which resulted in four useful papers published in 1932–33.[1][2] She also researched the auxin group of plant growth hormones.[1]

At Imperial in the mid-1930s, Hawker began to research fungal physiology, and in particular spore production.[1] She initially chose to study the ascomycete fungus Sordaria destruens (formerly Melanospora destruens), and investigated the factors affecting its spore production, such as the type of carbohydrate that it is growing on.[2] At Bristol she studied reproduction in the zygomycete fungus Rhizopus sexualis, identifying a volatile factor that promotes spore formation, which Graham Gooday and others identified as trisporic acid and related compounds.[2] She continued to study what triggered fungi to switch from vegetative growth to the reproductive phase for more than two decades. At the end of the 1950s, she abandoned this line of research in favour of observing the ultrastructural changes that occur during the production and germination of spores, and published prolifically on this topic from 1963 until her retirement.[1][2] These studies were facilitated when the Bristol botany department purchased an electron microscope in around 1960; she was among the earliest British researchers to take electron micrographs of fungal structures.[2]

 
Tuber macrosporum, one of the species of truffle that Hawker identified in England

In the mid-1930s she also researched fungal diseases affecting plants cultivated for their flowers, especially narcissus and gladiolus,[1][2] for example, basal rot caused by Fusarium species.[12] She later studied arbuscular mycorrhizas – the symbiotic relationship between root-colonising fungi and many plant species – with her experiments suggesting that the coloniser was often Pythium; however, Barbara Mosse showed that it was instead fungi of the order Glomerales.[2]

Her interests extended to macroscopic fungi. In 1934, with Terence Ingold, Hawker studied fungal distribution in the Mortimer area, near Reading.[5] In 1948, she started to investigate the distribution in Britain of hypogeous fungi, known as truffles: fungi with underground fruiting bodies.[1][2] She is said to have "revived the study of truffles in England";[8] before her work this group had not been studied since the Victorian era, and they were believed to be rare in the country.[1][13] In 1948–59, she found 1200 specimens from at least 60 species within 25 miles of Bristol. Her research resulted in a 1954 monograph,[1][2][8] and was described in 2005 as still "unequalled."[2]

Hawker is described as writing "fluently and with great speed."[1] She published Physiology of Fungi (1950), one of the earliest books on the topic,[2][6] and followed it up with Physiology of Reproduction in Fungi (1957).[1] Her undergraduate text Fungi: An Introduction (1960) surveys fungal diversity.[14] She also co-edited two textbooks on microbiology with Alan H. Linton and others, An Introduction to the Biology of Micro-organisms (1960) and Micro-organisms: Function, Form and Environment (1971).[1]

Personal life

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Hawker is not recorded as having married, and in later life she lacked close relatives.[1] Her main recreation was painting in watercolours, and after retirement in oils. She died in 1991.[1][8] Her will included a large legacy to the University of Bristol, which named a laboratory in her memory.[2]

Selected works

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Authored books

Co-edited books

Monograph, reviews

  • Lilian E. Hawker (1965). "Fine structure of fungi as revealed by electron microscopy", Biological Reviews 40: 52–91 doi:10.1111/j.1469-185X.1965.tb00795.x
  • Lilian E. Hawker (1954). "British hypogeous fungi" Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 237: 429–546 doi:10.1098/rstb.1954.0002

Research papers

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa M. F. Madelin (1992). "Lilian Edith Hawker, 1908–1991", Mycologia 84:, 154–156 JSTOR 3760245
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y Michael J. Carlile (2005). "Two influential mycologists: Helen Gwynne-Vaughan (1879–1967) and Lilian Hawker (1908–1991)", The Mycologist 19: 129–131 doi:10.1017/S0269-915X(05)00305-8
  3. ^ W. O. James (1967). "Walter Stiles. 1886–1966", Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 13: 343–357 JSTOR 769387
  4. ^ C. T. Ingold. "My involvement with aquatic hyphomycetes", in A Century of Mycology (Brian C. Sutton, ed.), p. 39 (Cambridge University Press; 1996) (ISBN 9780521570565)
  5. ^ a b John Webster (2010). "Obituary: Professor Terence Ingold 1905 – 2010", Mycologist News (4): 22–23
  6. ^ a b S. D. Garrett (1985). "William Brown: Pioneer leader in plant pathology", Annual Review of Phytopathology 23: 13–18
  7. ^ Jamie Carstairs (30 January 2018). "Special Collections and Women", Special Collections Blog, University of Bristol Library (retrieved 14 February 2021)
  8. ^ a b c d e Geoffrey C. Ainsworth. Brief Biographies of British Mycologists (John Webster, David Moore, eds), pp. 83–84 (British Mycological Society; 1996) (ISBN 0 9527704 0 7)
  9. ^ Richard Campbell (2008). "Michael Francis Madelin (1931–2007): a pioneer in the biology and ecology of conidial fungi and slime moulds", Mycological Research 112: 1489–1492
  10. ^ a b John Webster (1997). "The British Mycological Society, 1896–1996", Mycological Research 101: 1153–1178
  11. ^ Past MSA Honorary Members, Mycological Society of America (retrieved 16 February 2021)
  12. ^ Lilian E. Hawker (1935). "Further experiments on the Fusarium bulb rot of Narcissus", Annals of Applied Botany 22: 684–708 doi:10.1111/j.1744-7348.1935.tb07176.x
  13. ^ A. W. Legg (1994). "The truffles of Northumberland and Durham", The Vasculum 79: 6
  14. ^ a b Robert W. Embree (1967). "Review: Fungi. An Introduction by Lilian E. Hawker", The Quarterly Review of Biology 42: 545–546 JSTOR 2819856
  15. ^ Robert M. Page (1958). "Review: The Physiology of Reproduction in Fungi. Cambridge Monographs in Experimental Biology No. 6 by Lilian E. Hawker", Science 127: 36 JSTOR 1752604
  16. ^ C. V. S. (1957). "Review: The Physiology of Reproduction in Fungi. (Cambridge Monographs in Experimental Biology, No. 6.) by Lilian E. Hawker", Current Science 26: 364–365 JSTOR 24056923
  17. ^ John N. Couch (1957). "Review: The Physiology of Reproduction in Fungi by Lilian E. Hawker", AIBS Bulletin 7: 51 doi:10.2307/1292463
  18. ^ Thomas D. Brock (1957). "Reviewed: The Physiology of Reproduction in Fungi by Lilian E. Hawker", Mycologia 49: 905–906 doi:10.2307/3755820
  19. ^ P. H. Gregory (1957). "Review: The Physiology of Reproduction in Fungi. Cambridge Monographs in Experimental Biology, No. 6 by Lilian E. Hawker", Science Progress 45: 766–767 JSTOR 43416630
  20. ^ J. L. Harley (1957). "Review: The Physiology of Reproduction in Fungi. by Lilian E. Hawker", The New Phytologist 56: 268 JSTOR 2429369
  21. ^ Arthur W. Galston (1952). "Review: Physiology of Fungi. by Lilian E. Hawker; Physiology of the Fungi. by Virgil Greene Lilly, Horace L. Barnett", The Quarterly Review of Biology 27: 319–320 JSTOR 2813553
  22. ^ J. L. Harley (1951). "Review: Physiology of Fungi. by Lilian E. Hawker", The New Phytologist 50: 147 JSTOR 2429165
  23. ^ William D. Gray (1951). "Review: Physiology of Fungi by Lilian E. Hawker", Mycologia 43: 109–110 doi:10.2307/3755553
  24. ^ S. D. Garrett (1951). "Physiological Foundations of Mycology" Nature 167: 786 doi:10.1038/167786a0
  25. ^ U. Taubeneck (1972). "Lilian E. Hawker and A. H. Linton (Editors). Micro‐organisms. Function, Form and Environment", Zeitschrift für allgemeine Mikrobiologie 12: 436–437 doi:10.1002/jobm.19720120514
  26. ^ Oakley F. Roark (1981). "Review: Micro-Organisms: Function, Form and Environment by Lilian E. Hawker, Alan H. Linton, eds. 2nd ed.", The American Biology Teacher 43: 60 doi:10.2307/4447138
  27. ^ S. D. Garrett (1962). "Review: An Introduction to the Biology of Micro-organisms. by Lilian E. Hawker, A. H. Linton, B. F. Folkes, M. J. Carlile", Journal of Ecology 50: 262 doi:10.2307/2257214
  28. ^ B. W. Koft (1961). "Review: An Introduction to the Biology of Micro-organisms by Lilian E. Hawker, A. H. Linton, B. F. Folkers, M. J. Carlile", American Scientist 49: 320A–322A JSTOR 27827886
  29. ^ J. S. Harley (1961). "Review: An Introduction to the Biology of Micro-Organisms. by Lilian E. Hawker, A. H. Linton, B. F. Folkes, M. J. Carlile", The New Phytologist 60: 216–217 JSTOR 2429603
  30. ^ William G. Walter (1961). "Review: An Introduction to the Biology of Micro-Organisms by Lilian E. Hawker, A. H. Linton, B. F. Folkes, M. J. Carlile", AIBS Bulletin 11: 38 doi:10.2307/1292789
  31. ^ Paul A. Hartman (1961). "Review: An Introduction to the Biology of Micro-Organisms. by Lilian E. Hawker, A. H. Linton, B. F. Folkes, M. J. Carlile", The Quarterly Review of Biology 36: 235–236 JSTOR 2814891
  32. ^ Philip E. Hartman (1961). "Review: An Introduction to the Biology of Micro-Organisms. by Lilian E. Hawker, A. H. Linton, B. F. Folkes, M. J. Carlile", The Quarterly Review of Biology 36: 95–96 JSTOR 2816945
  33. ^ B. C. J. G. Knight (1962). "Review: An Introduction to the Biology of Micro-organisms by Lilian E. Hawker, A. H. Linton, B. F. Folkes, M. J. Carlile", Science Progress 50: 151 JSTOR 43418351
  34. ^ Anon. (1961). "Review: An Introduction to the Biology of Micro-organisms. by Lilian E. Hawker, A. H. Linton, B. F. Folkes, M. J. Carlile", Canadian Journal of Public Health 52: 498 JSTOR 41983306
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