The career of Frederick Edward Hulme is an excellent proof that art and exact science need not be strictly separated disciplines. In fact, hardly any art has done more for science than drawing, and without the draughtsman Frederick Edward Hulme, the scientist Hulme would be unthinkable.
Hulme (born 1841 in Hanley, County of Staffordshire), son of a landscape painter and grandson of a porcelain painter (Staffordshire with its capital Stoke-on-Trent is still a stronghold of tableware production today), was born to paint and draw and received his education at what is now the Royal College of Art in Kensington (London). In 1870, at the age of 29, he was appointed professor of drawing at Marlborough College in Wiltshire, which was founded in 1843 to train Anglican clergymen. But Hulme was by no means a sanctimonious aesthete. Like the Bohemian Augustinian Father Gregor Johann Mendel, Hulme dedicated his life to botany. His main work, "Familiar Wild Flowers", was written in Marlborough and included a detailed description of each plant and its flower, its habitat and its possible medicinal use. The heart of the nine-volume work, however, was a detailed, true-to-form and colourful drawing of each plant listed. If a popular Irish song says that there are "forty shades of green" on the island, you can easily find them in Hulme's drawings.
Hulme became famous for his botanical work - he never pursued botany professionally, however, but always as a hobby, although in 1869 he was even elected chairman of the "Royal Linnean Society of London", a society named after Carl von Linné to promote natural history. Just this branch of science was thoroughly shaken up in those years by the publications of a Charles Darwin. The Lenné Society still exists today. By profession Hulme always remained an illustrator. In 1885, he was appointed as the first drawing teacher at "Kings College" of the University of London, and remained there until his death. Hulme also wrote essays on heraldry (heraldry is the parade discipline of reckoning and is highly regarded in Great Britain) as well as on cryptography - the encryption and decryption of codes and secret writings.
Hulme was neither to learn how his cryptographic epigones won the Second World War for England by cracking the German codes, nor to enjoy the fame of his "well-known wild flowers": When he died in 1909 at the age of only 58, the ninth and last volume was just being completed - all nine volumes were only published together, i.e. after Frederick Edward Hulme's death.
The career of Frederick Edward Hulme is an excellent proof that art and exact science need not be strictly separated disciplines. In fact, hardly any art has done more for science than drawing, and without the draughtsman Frederick Edward Hulme, the scientist Hulme would be unthinkable.
Hulme (born 1841 in Hanley, County of Staffordshire), son of a landscape painter and grandson of a porcelain painter (Staffordshire with its capital Stoke-on-Trent is still a stronghold of tableware production today), was born to paint and draw and received his education at what is now the Royal College of Art in Kensington (London). In 1870, at the age of 29, he was appointed professor of drawing at Marlborough College in Wiltshire, which was founded in 1843 to train Anglican clergymen. But Hulme was by no means a sanctimonious aesthete. Like the Bohemian Augustinian Father Gregor Johann Mendel, Hulme dedicated his life to botany. His main work, "Familiar Wild Flowers", was written in Marlborough and included a detailed description of each plant and its flower, its habitat and its possible medicinal use. The heart of the nine-volume work, however, was a detailed, true-to-form and colourful drawing of each plant listed. If a popular Irish song says that there are "forty shades of green" on the island, you can easily find them in Hulme's drawings.
Hulme became famous for his botanical work - he never pursued botany professionally, however, but always as a hobby, although in 1869 he was even elected chairman of the "Royal Linnean Society of London", a society named after Carl von Linné to promote natural history. Just this branch of science was thoroughly shaken up in those years by the publications of a Charles Darwin. The Lenné Society still exists today. By profession Hulme always remained an illustrator. In 1885, he was appointed as the first drawing teacher at "Kings College" of the University of London, and remained there until his death. Hulme also wrote essays on heraldry (heraldry is the parade discipline of reckoning and is highly regarded in Great Britain) as well as on cryptography - the encryption and decryption of codes and secret writings.
Hulme was neither to learn how his cryptographic epigones won the Second World War for England by cracking the German codes, nor to enjoy the fame of his "well-known wild flowers": When he died in 1909 at the age of only 58, the ninth and last volume was just being completed - all nine volumes were only published together, i.e. after Frederick Edward Hulme's death.
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