William Hillhouse

William Hillhouse (17 December 1850 – 27 January 1910) was the first Professor of Botany at the University of Birmingham (1882–1909). He was one of the first professors appointed to the Mason Science College in Birmingham in 1882 and, prior to that appointment, was University Lecturer in Botany at the University of Cambridge and Lecturer in Botany at Newnham College, Cambridge and Girton College, Cambridge. During the first year of his tenure at Mason, Hillhouse spent time in Bonn in the laboratory of Professor Strasburger who was then one of the most famous botanists of the time.

Hillhouse was active in advancing education in the Midlands. He became an Assistant Master at his old school where he started to take up botany in conjunction with Edward Mann Langley and Joseph Reynolds Green, both at that time resident in Bedford, under the informal tuition of Samuel Hoppus Adams. He assisted in the creation of the Bedfordshire Natural History Society and was ‘instrumental in bringing together material of a new Floral History of Bedfordshire, although the material was never published.

Final years Hillhouse died in Malvern on 27 January 1910, a place to which he had moved as his health had for some years been precarious. His obituary in the Journal of Botany described his 'unfailing kindness and enthusiasm'.