Seward, Albert Charles (1863-1941)

English palaeobotanist whose work on Palaeozoic and Mesozoic plants established the new field of palaeobotany. His Fossil Plants as Tests of Climate (1892) was one of the earliest works of biogeochemistry and along with Jurassic Flora (1900-03) was widely acclaimed. He was knighted in 1936.

Seward was born in Lancaster and educated at St John's College, Cambridge, where he gained a first in natural sciences in 1886. He spent the next year studying palaeobotany at Manchester under William Crawford Williamson and then made a trip to Europe to study the collections of fossil plants in the continent's major museums. In 1890, he became a lecturer at Cambridge, establishing an international reputation as a palaeobotanist.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1898. In 1906, he took up the professorship of the Cambridge School of Botany, building up the department's popularity to the extent that it had to be extended in 1934. From 1915 to 1936, he was the master of Downing College and was made vice-chancellor of Cambridge University in 1924. He was awarded the Royal Medal in 1925 and the Darwin Medal in 1934.