Name Robert Praeger | Role Writer | |
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Died May 5, 1953, Belfast, United Kingdom Education Queen's University Belfast Books The way that I went, The Sunny Side of Ireland - w, An Account of the Genus Se, The Sunny Side of Ireland, Irish Landscape | ||
Robert Lloyd Praeger (25 August 1865 – 5 May 1953) was an Irish naturalist, writer and librarian.
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Life
Of a Unitarian background, he was born in Holywood, County Down, and grew up in that town where he was educated, first in the school of the Reverend McAlister and then at nearby Sullivan Upper School.
He worked in the National Library of Ireland in Dublin from 1893 to 1923. He co-founded and edited the Irish Naturalist, and wrote papers on the flora and other aspect of the natural history of Ireland. He organised the Lambay Survey in 1905/06 and, from 1909 to 1915, the wider Clare Island Survey. He was an engineer by qualification, a librarian by profession and a naturalist by inclination.
He was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal of the Royal Horticultural Society in 1921. He became the first President of both An Taisce and the Irish Mountaineering Club in 1948, and served as President of the Royal Irish Academy for 1931–34.
He is buried in Deansgrange Cemetery, Dublin with his wife Hedwig. His younger sister Rosamond Praeger was a sculptor and botanic artist.
Achievements
Praeger was instrumental in developing advanced methodologies in Irish botany by inviting Knud Jessen, the acclaimed Danish expert in Glacial and Post-Glacial flora, to undertake research and teaching in Ireland. This was to lead to the establishment of ‘paleoecology’ as a distinct field of study in Ireland.
"His" counties
A vice-county system was adopted by Praeger dividing Ireland into 40 vice-counties based on the counties. However the boundaries between them does not always correspond to the administrative boundaries and there are doubts as to the correct interpretation of them.