Michael Cressé Potter

Michael Cressé Potter (7 September 1858, in Corley, Warwickshire – 9 March 1948, in New Milton, Hampshire) was an English botanist, mycologist, phytopathologist, herbarium curator, and canon in the Church of England. He was the president of the British Mycological Society in 1909.

Biography He was christened on 7 November 1858 in Bulkington, Warwickshire. After education at St Edward's School, Oxford and The Perse School, Potter matriculated at in 1877 at Peterhouse, Cambridge. He graduated from the University of Cambridge with a B.A. in 1881, an M.A. in 1884, and a Sc.D. in 1909.

Potter was a Worts Traveling Scholar for botanical research in Portugal in 1886 and a Worts Travelling Scholar for the study of a tropical flora in Ceylon in 1888–1889. In 1889 he was appointed to a lectureship in the department of botany of Armstrong College (which is now a part of Newcastle University) in Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1909 Potter gave the British Mycological Society's presidential address entitled Bacteria in their relation to plant pathology.

During WW I, Potter was a volunteer in a Newcastle signaling unit, created for home defence. He also took Holy Orders in the Church of England to relieve younger clergymen whose ranks had been depleted by the demands of the British Armed Forces. His botanical specimens are stored at the University of Cambridge and at the National Museum of Wales.

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