Thomas Andrew Knight

1759-1838 English

Thomas Andrew Knight

Pioneiro da fisiologia vegetal

Thomas Andrew Knight foi um horticultor e botânico britânico. Ele serviu como o segundo presidente da Royal Horticultural Society (1811–1838). Ele nasceu em Wormesley Grange, cinco milhas a noroeste de Hereford em Herefordshire, segundo filho do reverendo Thomas Knight (1697–1764) de Wormsley Grange, reitor de Bewdley em Worcestershire, e de sua esposa Ursula Nash, filha de Frederick Nash de Dinham em Shropshire. He attended Balliol College, Oxford. After graduation, he took up the study of horticulture. Attention was first called to his work in 1795 by the publication of the results of his research into the propagation of fruit trees and the diseases prevalent among them. He used 10,000 acres (4,000 ha) of land he inherited to conduct breeding of plants including strawberries, cabbages and peas and built an extensive greenhouse. In 1797 he published his Treatise on the Culture of the Apple and Pear, and on the Manufacture of Cider and Perry, a work which passed through several editions. He was one of the leading students of horticulture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but his personal papers disappeared after his death. Knight realizou experimentos fisiológicos básicos em plantas, trabalho que anteriormente havia sido realizado apenas raramente. Ele elucidou os efeitos da gravidade nas mudas e como a podridão em árvores frutíferas era transmitida por enxertia.

Artworks by this artist (30 total)