Correspondence concerning the appointment of Agnes Arber as President of Section K of the British Association for the Advancement of Science for a meeting in Edinburgh: Letter to William Abbot Herdman from Frederick Orpen Bower

1

Letter to William Abbot Herdman from Frederick Orpen Bower in which he thanks him for his letter and informs him that he has also had a letter from Herbert Hall Turner which has cleared the air and both constitute a sort of invitation for him to express his views on the situation at the 11th hour. He is doing this in a letter to Turner and he encloses a copy for Herdman's information, he claims it is horribly frank. He tells Herdman that "the fact is the council has been misled by a woman whose myopic vision does not extend beyond the ringfences of Newnham" but states that he regrets if the section K affair has in any way become entangled in Cambridge politics. He claims his view is a detatched one and that his objection is not to her as a woman, but that he believes Edinburgh deserves a botanists of greater standing. He informs Herdman that in his opinion, the next biological president should be Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour but failing him, Dukinfield Henry Scott.

• Academic Disputes
• Appointment to Office
• Botanists
• Botany
• Feminism
• Male Dominance
• Meetings
• Nominations for Office
• Professional Associations
• Professional Criticism
• Professional Honours
• Professional Interaction
• Resignation from Office
• Women in Science

• Arber | Agnes | 1879-1960 | nee Robertson | researcher in plant anatomy, Newnham College Cambridge
• Balfour | Sir | Isaac Bayley | 1853-1922 | professor of botany, University of Edinburgh and regius keeper of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh
• Bower | Frederick Orpen | 1855-1948 | regius professor of botany, University of Glasgow
• Herdman | Sir | William Abbott | 1858-1924 | professor of natural history, University of Liverpool
• Scott | Dukinfield Henry | 1854-1934 | president of the Linnean Society

• British Association for the Advancement of Science | 1831-: | scientific society | London (England)
• University of Cambridge | 1209-: | university | Cambridge (England)

• Edinburgh (Scotland)