J. F. V. Phillips

Dr John Frederick Vicars (sometimes Vickers) Phillips FRSE FRSS FLS (1899–1987) was a 20th-century South African botanist. He was an advocate of fire ecology theories.

Life

He was born in Grahamstown in South Africa on 15 March 1899, the only son of Prof John Robert Centilivres Phillips (1850–1940), and his wife Emily Dorothy Lovemore (born 1858).[1][2]

He was educated at Dale College in King William's Town. He served an apprenticeship in the South African Forestry Departmant and then won a bursary to study at Edinburgh University in Scotland. There he gained a degree in Forestry. He then returned to South Africa as Forestry Officer in Deepwalls in Knysna doing ecological research on the indigenous forrests. His work led him into work with both Jan Smuts and Pole Evans.[3]

In 1927 he became Deputy Director of the Tsetse Fly Research Centre in Tanganyika.

In 1929 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Sir William Wright Smith, William Edgar Evans, Robert James Douglas Graham and James Ritchie.[4]

In 1931 he was created Professor of Botany at Witwatersrand University. There he created their first School of Ecology and established the Frankenwald Research station. He introduced courses on soil conservation in 1946. He left Witwatersrand in 1948.[5]

In the 1950s he began the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Ghana. In 1960 he moved from Ghana to Rhodesia becoming an advisor to the World Bank and to the Food and Agricultural Organisation. From 1985 to 1068 he led a United Nations Narcotics Bureau mission to northern Thailand and other Far Eastern countries to investigate drug-producing crops. In 1969 he was President of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science.[3]

He died at Bluebird Farm, Hekpoort near Gauteng in South Africa on 17 January 1987.

Family

He married Jeanie Dalgleish Turnbull (1903–1979), whom he met while studying for a degree in the Botany Department, University of Edinburgh . They had two daughters and two sons, including Frederick Jan Smuts Phillips.[6]

Publications

  • Fire: Its Influence on Biotic Communities and Physical Factors in South and East africa (1930)
  • Edology, the Foundation of Forestry (1931)
  • Mortality Among Plants (1931)
  • Plant Indicators in the Knsyna Region (1931)
  • Committee of Inquiry into African Education (1962)

References

  1. ↑ "archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/SOUTH-AFRICA/1999-10/0940925715". archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com. Retrieved 2018-02-13.
  2. ↑ "Prof. John Frederick Vickers Phillips b. 1899 Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, South Africa d. Aft 1979: British 1820 Settlers to South Africa". 1820settlers.com. Retrieved 2018-02-13.
  3. 1 2 "TRIBUTE TO PROFESSOR JOHN PHILIPS: South African Forestry Journal: Vol 141, No 1". tandfonline.com. Retrieved 2018-02-13.
  4. ↑ Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783 – 2002 (PDF). The Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 2006. ISBN 0 902 198 84 X.
  5. ↑ John F.V. Phillips (2012-08-07). "Fire: its influence on biotic communities and physical factors in South and East Africa" (PDF). Fire Ecology. 8 (2). doi:10.4996/fireecology.0802001. Retrieved 2018-02-13.
  6. ↑ "John Frederick Vickers Phillips (1899 - 1987) - Genealogy". geni.com. Retrieved 2018-02-13.


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