Edwin John Butler

Sir Edwin John Butler (13 August 1874 – 4 April 1943) was an Irish mycologist and plant pathologist. He became the Imperial Mycologist in India and later the first director of the Imperial Bureau of Mycology in England. He was knighted in 1939. During his twenty years in India, he began large scale surveys on fungi and plant pathology and published the landmark book Fungi and Disease in Plants: An Introduction to the Diseases of Field and Plantation Crops, especially those of India and the East and has been called the Father of Mycology and Plant Pathology in India.

Background and education E.J. Butler was born in Kilkee, County Clare, Ireland the son of Thomas Butler, a resident magistrate. He initially went to school in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire but returned to Ireland in 1887 due to illness and studied under a tutor. A library in Cahersiveen where his father was transferred helped him develop an interest in a diverse range of topics. In 1890 his health improved and he went to the Christian Brothers School followed by Queen's College, Cork, where in 1898 he took the degrees of M.B., B.Ch., and B.A.O.

Career in India Butler took an initial interest in botany thanks to Marcus Hartog, a Professor of Natural History. Hartog was researching Saprolegnia a genus of fungus-like water moulds and Butler learnt techniques of study which he later applied to the related genus Pythium. He went to Paris, Antibes, Freiburg, and Kew, spending time in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris in the laboratory of mycologist Philippe Édouard Léon Van Tieghem. In 1900, at the recommendation of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, he was appointed as the first Cryptogamic Botanist to the Government of India at Calcutta.

Selected publications

1903. Report on 'Spike' disease among sandalwood trees. 1906. (With J. M. Hayman and W. H. Moreland) Indian wheat rusts. Mem. Dep. Agric. India, Bot. Ser. (2) 1, 58 pp. 1 graph, 5 pls. (4 col.). 1908. Report on coconut palm disease in Travancore. Bull. Agric. Res. Inst. Pusa, no. 9, 23 pp. 1909. Fomes lucidus (Leys) Fr. a suspected parasite. Indian Forester, 35, 514–518, 1 col. pl. 1918. Fungi and disease in plants. Thacker, Spink & Co. Calcutta. vi+547 pp. 206 figs. 1924. Bud-rot of coconut and other palms. Rep. Imp. Bot. Conf. Lond. July 1924, 145–147. 1925. Meteorological conditions and plant diseases. Int. Ree. Sci. Pract. Agric. n.s. (2) 3, 369–384. 1926. The wilt diseases of cotton and sesamum in India. Agric. J. India, (4)21,268–273, 1pl. 1931. (With G. R. Bisby) The fungi of India. Scientific Monograph Imperial Council of Agric. Research no. 1, xviii+237 pp. 1 map.