Francis Wall Oliver
Francis Wall Oliver FRS (10 May 1864 – 14 September 1951) was an English botanist whose interests evolved from plant anatomy to palaeobotany to ecology. Oliver was from a Quaker (Society of Friends) family and was educated first at the Friends School, Kendal, then at Bootham School, York, and finally at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took a first-class degree in natural sciences. [1]
His father, Daniel, was Professor of Botany at University College, London (UCL), and Keeper of the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG), Kew, Surrey. Thus, from boyhood, Francis was familiar with the leading botanists of the age. His father was the confidante of the Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, Director of the RBG, and was a valued correspondent of Charles Darwin, advising Darwin on a number of botanical questions.