George Stapledon

Sir Reginald George Stapledon FRS (22 September 1882 – 16 September 1960) was a British grassland scientist and pioneer environmentalist.

Early life The sixth of the seven children born to shipping agent William Stapledon and Mary Clibbert (daughter of shipbuilder William Clibbert), Stapledon, who was born in Northam, Devon, also had three half-siblings. The family claimed to be related to Walter de Stapledon, the 14th century Bishop of Exeter. ) he worked in Suez for the family firm between 1904 and 1906 before giving up the commercial life. Between 1914 and 1918 he worked for the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries in London and succeeded in getting them to set up a seed testing station. Stapledon came to love the natural beauty of Wales and indeed argued that anybody who interfered with the 'shapely outline' of the Cambrian Mountains should be treated as a criminal. Following an ecological approach he developed a number of new varieties of grass, oats and clover, known as 'S' strains, and increased awareness of the importance of grasslands in agriculture, particularly in New Zealand where his work was especially influential. His work was recognised in 1939 when he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and knighted. He also persuaded the government to set up a grassland research station at Hurley, Berkshire before his retirement in 1946. He found kindred spirits in some of the highly conservative rural organisations that existed at the time and was a member of both Rolf Gardiner's Kinship in Husbandry group and Montague Fordham's Rural Reconstruction Association.

Later life Given the low-levels of pensions for government science workers he was forced to return to work in 1947, accepting the position of Science Adviser to the Messrs Dunn's Farm Seeds company in Salisbury. His work was interrupted in 1952 by major surgery and he spent the rest of his life in severe ill health, suffering variously from angina, kidney problems, bronchitis, Ménière's disease and in his final three years profound hearing loss. His nephew was the science fiction writer and philosopher Olaf Stapledon, son of George Stapledon's eldest brother William.