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Alexander Dickson FRSE (21 February 1836 – 30 December 1887) was a Scottish morphological botanist and botanical artist. Born at Edinburgh, his family had previously had members in the legal and medical professions; one of the earliest of whom any special records exist having been John Dickson of Kilbucho and Hartree, a lawyer, who in 1649 was appointed a Senator of the College of Justice, taking the title of Lord Hartree. ==Education== Dickson received his early education at home. In 1855, he entered the University of Edinburgh as a student of medicine; and soon engaged with enthusiasm in those preliminary scientific studies which have so frequently been the occasion of the first awakenings of latent scientific impulses. In him they appear to have served this purpose. He became an enthusiastic biologist; and a warm admirer and disciple of Goodsir, in whose philosophical tendencies he found, like many of his friends, the inspiring direction that soon became so marked and characteristic a feature of his scientific work and aims. Engrossed in natural science, he took, it would seem, comparatively little interest in the purely professional or technical departments of the medical curriculum. He, however, appreciated differentiation as a means of promoting advancement in the art as well as in the science of medicine. In his inaugural address, delivered in 1859, as a President of the Royal Medical Society, he supposes the questions, :"Of what use is it for a student of medicine to know that the cranium is composed of vertebral elements—that such and such bones of the face correspond to costal arches; and that certain bones and muscles of the upper extremities correspond to other bones and muscles in the lower? Why should" his "memory be burdened with apophysis and epiphysis, when" there is "so much else to be learned of more direct importance ?" And he goes on, —" To such objections it may be answered, that although morphological anatomy in its present state may be of little practical importance to the medical man, yet this is no reason why he should not study it. It must be at once apparent that, from the nature of homological anatomy, one of the great ends which it is destined to accomplish is a simplified teaching of descriptive anatomy, by a logical and intelligible arrangement and generalisation of the enormous mass of facts with which the anatomical student has to contend ; and this can only be attained to by the development and perfecting of homological anatomy, by which alone a philosophical classification of anatomical details can be rendered possible. Such being the case, all doubt as to the utility of homological anatomy must be thrown aside. Its study must surely be of importance, if it enables anyone to assist, however slightly, in promoting so good an end. The medical man, while he performs his duties to his suffering fellow-creatures, ought never to forget at the same time what he owes to medical science and to posterity." Dickson graduated as doctor of medicine in August 1860, having previously, in accordance with his biological proclivities, studied under Albert von Kölliker in Würzburg and Rudolf Virchow in Berlin. His career as a teacher of botany began in the summer of 1862, when he conducted the class of botany in the University of Aberdeen for Professor George Dickie, who was at the time incapacitated by bad health. He thus obtained an opportunity for displaying his merits as a teacher; and his success proved of much value in securing for him in 1866 the chair of Botany in the University of Dublin. Two years afterwards he was appointed Professor of Botany in the University of Glasgow, where he confirmed his early reputation as a clear and painstaking teacher and an enthusiastic worker in structural and morphological botany. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Alexander Dickson (botanist)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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