Daniel Hanbury

Daniel Hanbury FRS (11 September 1825 – 24 March 1875) was a British botanist and pharmacologist. He was an early student of pharmacognosy, the study of the medicinal applications of nature, principally of plants.

Life

Hanbury was born on 11 September 1825 in Clapham, at that time in Surrey, the eldest son of Daniel Bell Hanbury, a Quaker pharmacist, and his wife Rachel, née Christy. He went to Clapham Grammar School in 1833, and in 1841 started work at his father's firm, Allen & Hanbury's in the City of London. In 1857 he completed his training in pharmaceutical chemistry at the Pharmaceutical Society. While there he had come into contact with pharmacist-botanists including Jacob Bell, Jonathan Pereira and Theophilus Redwood, and had become interested both in botany and in pharmacognosy, the knowledge of medicines, and particularly of their geographical and botanical origins.

Hanbury never married, was a vegetarian, and – like many of his Victorian contemporaries – opposed the use of alcohol and tobacco.

He retired from business in 1870, and in 1874, in partnership with the Swiss botanist Friedrich August Flückiger, published his Pharmacographia. He died on 24 March 1875 in Clapham of typhoid fever, and was buried in the burial ground of the Society of Friends at Wandsworth.

Work

Hanbury's extensive knowledge of the world's botany was based on years of study, collecting and travel – trips to the Middle East and throughout Europe were supplemented by extensive correspondence with colleagues throughout the world. He was an essential partner to his brother, Sir Thomas Hanbury, in selecting specimens for and establishing the Giardini Botanici Hanbury at La Mortola, now maintained by the University of Genoa. On his death, Sir Thomas donated his brother's entire botanical cabinet collection to Kew Gardens, where it is now part of the Economic Botany Collection.