With Balfour's retirement in 1879 the link of Botany with Medicine in the University was still further weakened. Medicine was left out of the title of the Chair to which Alexander Dickson succeeded.
Alexander Dickson of Hartree and Kilbucho was born at Edinburgh, 21st July, 1836. He was the second son of David Dickson of Hartree in Peeblesshire, and the representative of a family for long lairds of the estates of which, by the early death of his elder brother, he became proprietor. Educated privately, he entered the University of Edinburgh as a student of Medicine, graduating in 1860. Before graduation he had studied in Würzburg and in Berlin, particularly under Kölliker and Virchow, and after it he embarked on the stream of medical practice in Edinburgh. But that was convention—a demonstration of brass plate. His means placed him beyond the necessity of such professional work. His instinct lay in the direction of discovery of method more than in its application. During his student days he had shown a keen interest in Botany. Before graduation he had written on botanical subjects, and his thesis on graduation "The development of the flower in Caryophyllaceae" witnesses to his obsession. Whilst waiting for patients, he had continued work on embryogeny in plants, and when in 1862 the ill health of Professor Dickie at Aberdeen required the appointment of a substitute, the selection of Dickson set seal to his claims as a professed Botanist. In 1866 he succeeded Harvey as Professor in Dublin. Thence in 1868 he was translated to Glasgow as successor to Walker-Arnott, and in 1879 became Professor of Botany and Queen's Botanist in Edinburgh on the retirement of Balfour, and, holding these positions, he died in 1887.
Dickson's passion was not teaching, and his success is testimony to the quality of the man. He was adored by his students, as could not well be otherwise with a man of his geniality and kindliness; he took immense pains over his lectures, spending hours daily over the making of fresh drawings on the blackboard for his classes, holding that a student would copy a temporary sketch although he would not copy a permanent wall-diagram; the lecture itself was a model of scientific presentment; at excursions he was untiring in demonstration and in fruitful suggestion, and he was always ready to give of his best to his pupils; but his real love was for research and he carried out many organographical investigations which have added to the sum of natural knowledge. His record in published papers far exceeds that of any of his predecessors, and the quality of his work recalls that of Irmisch. Flower-morphology, embryogeny, teratology, were the subjects to which he gave most attention in research, and in them he obtained results of solid and permanent value. For a time the subject of phyllotaxy occupied him, but it is not a fruitful theme although it gave him opportunity for showing his power of clear analysis; much more interesting was his subsequent work on pitcher plants of kinds.
Dickson possessed great skill in manipulation, and was strikingly effective in the use of his pencil in artistic delineation of the objects of his investigation. Careful in his work he took endless pains to secure that accuracy which it always shows. Further, his subject is always illumined by the comparative method of treatment which his wide knowledge and sound critical faculty enabled him to bring to bear upon it.
The duties of his lairdship were no light ones to Dickson who had set himself to build up again what had come to him in an impoverished condition, and affairs of Church and State were a very real interest to him. Amidst all these ties, to which has to be added the administration of the Botanic Garden, in which during his tenure a new and enlarged Lecture Hall was built, he found time to cultivate the musical faculty for which he was distinguished; not only was he a pianist of mark, but he found absorbing zest in the collecting of national airs sung by the peasants of Scotland.
In the line of Professors of Botany in Edinburgh no one ranked higher in distinction than Alexander Dickson, with whose name I conclude this sketch.
FOOTNOTE:
[135] His portrait forms the frontispiece of this book.