Isaac Bayley Balfour Papers

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This volume contains items relating to the expedition to Socotra Island, South of Aden [Yemen], which took place from 9 January 1880 to 21 April 1880. The volume includes correspondence, telegrams, published reports and press cuttings. The folios are a mixture of hand-written and typed material, between December 1879 and June 1889 (the majority of items produced between 1880-1882). The content relates to the expedition’s effort to record the botany, geology and zoology of the island.

Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 31 March 1853. He studied first at Edinburgh University, where he specialised in botany, and went on to study in Strasbourg. From 1875 to 1878 he acted as a lecturer in botany at the Royal Veterinary College, for which he obtained a medical qualification. Following this he took a teaching position in Edinburgh University, and graduated with an MD in 1883.

Balfour served as a botanist and geologist on an expedition to Rodriguez Island in the Indian Ocean in 1874. He later spent seven weeks on an expedition to Socotra in the Indian Ocean (1880), investigating its flora, fauna and geology, which led to the publication of Botany of Socotra (1888).

In 1879 Balfour was made regius chair of botany at Glasgow, and in 1884 secured the Sheridan chair of botany at Oxford, combined with a fellowship at Magdalen College. During his tenure at Oxford, Balfour established relations with the Clarendon Press, and actively supported the foundation of the Annals of Botany (1887), a quarterly journal publishing results from experimental botanical research. In 1888 Balfour returned to Edinburgh University to take up the position of professor of Botany, as well as the title of Queen?s botanist in Scotland, and regius keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden (Scotland).

Balfour was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1884, and made KBE in 1920. He died in Haselmere, Surrey, in 1922.