John Ralfs

John Ralfs (13 September 1807 – 14 July 1890) was an English botanist. Born in Millbrook, Hampshire, near Southampton, he was the second son of Samuel Ralfs, a yeoman of an old family in Hampshire. He has been commemorated in the names of many plant groups and taxa at many levels. before John was a year old, and the children (two sons and two daughters) were brought up at Southampton by their mother. After being educated privately he was articled to his uncle, a surgeon of Brentford, with whom he lived for two years and a half. For two years he was a pupil at Winchester Hospital, and in 1832 he passed his final examination, being specially recommended by the examiners for his knowledge of botany. For some time he practised in partnership with another surgeon at Shoreditch, and he is also said to have practised at Towcester.

At Torquay, where he moved on account of lung disease (probably tubercular in origin Charles Darwin was one of the notable scientists who subscribed.

Death In spite of ill-health and failing eyesight, he actively pursued botanical researches until he was seventy-five years old. He was long a member of the committee of the Penzance library, catalogued its books and prepared its printed catalogue, as well as being responsible for the purchase of much of its natural history stock. He died at 15 St Clare Street, Penzance, on 14 July 1890, and was buried in St Clare cemetery, where a monument was erected to his memory by the members of the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society, of which body he was a vice-president after its resuscitation in 1880, and president for 1883–4.

Ralfs was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society in 1889, and was offered, but declined, associateship of the Linnean Society.

Correspondence & collaboration with other scientists Arthur Hill Hassall long corresponded with Ralfs, who suggested that they should render each other assistance in their inquiries. But when Hassall's British Freshwater Algæ, including Descriptions of the Desmideæ and Diatomaceæ, which, in Ralfs's opinion, ought to have been published jointly, appeared in 1845, no mention was made of Ralfs. The History of Infusoria, by Andrew Pritchard, was enlarged and revised by Ralfs and other botanists. His contribution on the diatomaceæ was condensed by Pritchard (pp. 756–940).

Ralfs aided in the botanical portions of the Guide to Ilfracombe, 1838; the Guide to Penzance, by J. S. Courtney, 1845; the Week at the Land's End, by John Thomas Blight, 1861; the Official Guide to Penzance, 1876, and he supplied the list of desmids to Jenner's Flora of Tunbridge Wells. He sent many plants for description in the second edition of English Botany by Sir James Edward Smith. Berkeley gave the name of Ralfsia to a genus of seaweeds, and Wilson named a Jungermannia in his honour. Charles Darwin in his Insectivorous Plants gracefully referred to those supplied to him by Ralfs from the neighbourhood of Penzance.