Joseph Dalton Hooker - Work - Darwin and Evolution

Darwin and Evolution

See also: Reaction to Darwin's theory and 1860 Oxford evolution debate

While on the Erebus, Hooker had read proofs of Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle provided by Charles Lyell and had been very impressed by Darwin's skill as a naturalist. They had met once, before the Antarctic voyage embarked. After Hooker's return to England, he was approached by Darwin who invited him to classify the plants that Darwin had collected in South America and the Galápagos Islands. Hooker agreed and the pair began a lifelong friendship. On 11 January 1844 Darwin mentioned to Hooker his early ideas on the transmutation of species and natural selection, and Hooker showed interest. In 1847 he agreed to read Darwin's "Essay" explaining the theory, and responded with notes giving Darwin calm critical feedback. Their correspondence continued throughout the development of Darwin's theory and in 1858 Darwin wrote that Hooker was "the one living soul from whom I have constantly received sympathy".

Richard Freeman wrote: "Hooker was Charles Darwin's greatest friend and confidant". Certainly they had extensive correspondence, and they also met face-to-face (Hooker visiting Darwin). Hooker and Lyell were the two people Darwin consulted (by letter) when Wallace's famous letter arrived at Down House, enclosing his paper on natural selection. Hooker was instrumental in creating the device whereby the Wallace paper was accompanied by Darwin's notes and his letter to Asa Gray (showing his prior realization of natural selection) in a presentation to the Linnean Society. Hooker was the one who formally presented this material to the Linnean Society meeting in 1858. In 1859 the author of The Origin of Species recorded his indebtedness to Hooker's wide knowledge and balanced judgment.

In December 1859, Hooker published the Introductory Essay to the Flora Tasmaniae, the final part of the Botany of the Antarctic Voyage. It was in this essay (which appeared just one month after the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species), that Hooker announced his support for the theory of evolution by natural selection, thus becoming the first recognised man of science to publicly back Darwin.

At the historic debate on evolution held at the Oxford University Museum on 30 June 1860, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, Benjamin Brodie and Robert FitzRoy spoke against Darwin's theory, and Hooker and Thomas Henry Huxley defended it. According to Hooker's own account, it was he and not Huxley who delivered the most effective reply to Wilberforce's arguments.

Hooker acted as president of the British Association at its Norwich meeting of 1868, when his address was remarkable for its championship of Darwinian theories. He was a close friend of Thomas Henry Huxley, a member of the X-Club (which dominated the Royal Society in the 1870s and early 1880s), and the first of the three X-Clubbers in succession to become President of the Royal Society. In 1862, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.