HARRY MARSHALL WARD
1854—1906
Training at South Kensington—Cambridge—Germany—investigates coffee disease in Ceylon—his early investigations—appointment to Manchester and association with Williamson—Ward's brilliance as an investigator—Cooper's Hill—investigation of lily disease—leguminous root tubercles—symbiosis and the ginger-beer plant—the Croonian Lecture—the bacteriology of water—bactericidal action of light—Ward's "law of doubling"—appointment to Cambridge—mycoplasm controversy—infection and immunity—physiological varieties of Rusts—bridgeing species—illness and death—his record as an investigator—personal characteristics.
Harry Marshall Ward, eldest son of Francis Marshall Ward, was born in Hereford, March 21, 1854, but he came of a Lincolnshire stock, settled for some time in Nottingham. From unavoidable causes he left school at 14, but afterwards continued his education by attending evening classes organised under the Science and Art Department. To that Department, he owed indirectly the opportunity of a useful and brilliant career. His means were small, and his earliest aim was to qualify as a science teacher. He was admitted to a course of instruction for teachers in training given by Prof. Huxley in 1874–5. Although he must have derived from it a sound insight into the principles of zoology, the subject does not seem to have had any permanent attraction for him.
In the summer of 1857 Ward came under my hands in a course of instruction in botany which I conducted with Prof. Vines in the Science Schools at South Kensington, and from this time onwards we were in intimate relations to the close of his life. I can best tell the story as it came under my eyes.
