Arthur Roy Clapham, CBE FRS (24 May 1904 - 18 December 1990), was a British botanist.

Educated at Downing College, Cambridge, Clapham worked at Rothamsted Experimental Station as a crop physiologist (1928-30), and then took a teaching post in the botany department at Oxford University. He was Professor of Botany at Sheffield University 1944-69. He coauthored the Flora of the British Isles, first published in 1952 and followed by two later editions in 1963 and 1987. In response to a request from Arthur Tansley, he coined the term ecosystem in the early 1930s .^[1]

Clapham was president of the Linnean Society from 1967 to 1970, and received the Linnean Medal in 1972.

[edit] Books

• (with W.O. James) The biology of flowers. Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1935.
• (with T.G. Tutin and E.F. Warburg) Flora of the British Isles. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press 1952.
• (with T.G. Tutin and E.F. Warburg) Excursion flora of the British Isles. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press 1959.
• Flora of Derbyshire. Derby Museum and Art Gallery. 1969.
• The Oxford book of trees, (illustrations by B.E. Nicholson). London : Oxford University Press, 1975.

[edit] Obituaries

• Donald Pigott "Professor A. R. Clapham," New Phytologist, Vol. 119, No. 1 (Sep., 1991), pp. 3-4.
• Donald Pigott "Obituary: Arthur Roy Clapham, CBE, FRS (1904-1990)," The Journal of Ecology, Vol. 80, No. 2 (Jun., 1992), pp. 361-365.
• A. J. Willis "Arthur Roy Clapham. 24 May 1904-18 December 1990," Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, Vol. 39, (Feb., 1994), pp. 73-90.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Clapham papers, at Sheffield University
• Royal Society certificate of election