Mordecai Cubitt Cooke (1825 - 1914)
Mordecai Cubitt Cooke (1825-1914) Cooke came from a mercantile family in Horning and worked as an apprentice to a fabric merchant before becoming a clerk in a law firm, but his chief interest was in botany. He founded the Society of Amateur Botanists in 1862 and taught natural history at Holy Trinity National School, Lambeth, and worked as a curator at the India Museum from 1860 to 1879. In 1879 when the botanical collections from the India Museum were transferred to Kew, Cooke went with them. He received the Victoria Medal of Honour from the Royal Horticulural Society in 1902 and the Linnean Medal from the Linnean Society of London in 1903. Cooke took part in the publication, together with Edward Step (1855–1931), of the monthly magazine Hardwicke’s Science Gossip from 1865 to 1893. As well as Grevillea, a monthly record of cryptogamic botany and its literature, from 1872 to 1894, which was devoted to the study of mushrooms.
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