Papers of Professor Ronald Good

This collection consists of Professor Ronald Good's notes on Liliiflorae and related documents including correspondence concerning the Distribution Maps Scheme for the Botanical Society. Most of the notes are handwritten and many are in draft form. The collection also includes several essays written by Professor Good as well as black and white photographs of Spurn Point and various species of trees.

Ronald D'Oyley Good was born in Dorchester on 5th March 1896 and retained a passion for Dorset throughout his life publishing numerous articles and books including A Geographical Handbook of the Dorset Flora (published in 1948), The Last Villages of Dorset (1979) and Concise Flora of Dorset (1984).

During the First World War he served with the Dorset Regiment, and later the Lincolnshire Regiment. He was wounded in the trenches and invalided home. He studied at Downing College, Cambridge and in 1922 his interest in botany secured him a postition at the Natural History Museum and he remained there for six years.

In 1928 he took a position in the Botany department at Hull staying for over thirty years and rising to become Professor of Botany and Head of Department until his retirement in 1959. Here he developed a his interest in plant geography with the publication in 1948 of The Geography of the Flowering Plants which quickly became a standard reference text. He also had a strong interest in the evolutionary process including man's role in both the transfer and destruction of species, publishing two key texts Features of Evolution in Flowering Plants (1956) and The Philosophy of Evolution (1981).

He died on 11 December 1992.

Access will be granted to any accredited reader

Donated by the Department of Applied Biology, University of Hull, through Ann Braithwaite, 28 July 1989