John Christopher Willis 1868-1958

John Christopher Willis was bom at Birkenhead on 20 February 1868. He studied at University College, Liverpool, and at Cambridge and for a time was an assistant in the Botany Department at Glasgow. In 1896, he was appointed director of the Royal Botanic Garden, Peradeniya, Ceylon, and held the post for 15 years. From 1912 to 1915 he was director of the Botanic Garden at Rio de Janeiro and after his retirement he worked at Cambridge and later went to live at Les Terrages, Avenue des Alpes, Montreux, Switzerland, where he died on 21 March 1958. He married Minnie, daughter of T. Baldwin, in 1897, and she died in 1931. There were three daughters of the marriage. He was an M.A. and Sc.D.(Cantab.), and was given an honorary S.D. by Harvard. He was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1897 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1919.The Annals of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Peradeniya , was a periodical founded by him, volume 1 part 1 appearing on 27 June 1901. Willis contributed very largely to the earlier volumes and edited volumes 1 to 4 inclusive, to 1910, and volume 5, parts 1 to 3, to December 1911. He was also editor ofThe Empire Cotton Growing Review from vol. 1, 1924 to vol. 16, 1939.