Author Biography
Dr H. H. Allan (1882-1957) was educated at Nelson College and held the New Zealand degrees of M.A. and D.Sc. While engaged in a successful teaching career he embarked on botanical research and later, at the insistence of Dr Leonard Cockayne, joined the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, where he built up and directed the Botany Division until his retirement in 1948. He was a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London and of the Royal Society of New Zealand, was awarded the Hutton Memorial Medal and the Hector Memorial Medal and Prize for his botanical researches, and received the honour of C.B.E. In 1957 he was one of 12 eminent biologists to be given the honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy and Master of Arts in the University of Uppsala, conferred during he Swedish celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Linnaeus.
Apart from this work, Flora of New Zealand, Dr Allan is the author of three smaller textbooks, one on trees and shrubs, one on grasses, and one on naturalised plants; all are long out of print and now difficult to acquire. He published also many technical papers, including a series in which, in association with Dr Cockayne, he recorded the wide incidence and great importance of wild hybrids in plants, a concept then quite novel but now universally accepted.
