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John Macqueen Cowan was born in Apr 1892 in Banchory, Kincardineshire. He was the son of Reverend William Cowan and grandson of Reverend Robert Cowan of Elgin. John Cowan attended school at Robert Gordon's College in Aberdeen and continued his education at the University of Edinburgh where he achieved his degree of Bachelor of Science in 1914, with Intermediate Honours in Geology and Zoology and Final Honours in Botany. Whilst at university he was appointed Assistant Lecturer by Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour and was responsible for teaching medical students.
In Jul 1914 Cowan was appointed a probationer in the Indian Forest Service. He volunteered for the Army at the outbreak of the First World War but was instructed by the India Office to continue his training. He matriculated at Oxford University in 1914 and studied for Honours Botany and a Diploma in Forestry. A few months later it was agreed by the India Office that, on the completion of his Diploma, which he was awarded in 1915, he would be sent to India. After receiving his Diploma Cowan spent three months of practical training in Switzerland and then sailed for Bengal, India in Jan 1916. He was later allowed to join the Army where he served in the Punjab, Bombay, Egypt, Sinai and Palestine until Jan 1919, when he returned to India. He held the post of Divisional Forest Officer and managed the Chittagong, Cox's Bazaar, Chittagong Hill Tracts and Kalimpong Forest Divisions. By the end of 1919 he became Forest Working Plans Officer, devoting much of his time to systematic botany and botanical survey. On completion of his work in Chittagong, he progressed to the Kalimpong Forest Division.
After visiting Ceylon and Italy in 1924, Cowan returned to England where he spent two years at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. During his leave in England, he completed the statutory requirements for the Bachelor of Arts degree of Oxford, which he received in 1925. He also spent some of his time in Edinburgh as University Lecturer in Forest Engineering, and he wrote his doctoral thesis at the University of Edinburgh on 'The forests of Kalimpong - an ecological account' (published in 1927). In 1926 he was asked to return temporarily to India to act as Director of the Botanical Survey of India, as Superintendent of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Calcutta and as Superintendent of Cinchona Cultivation in Bengal. He held these appointments for two years. He underwent further botanical expeditions to Persia and the Caspian in 1929. From 1930 to 1954 he held the position of Assistant Regius Keeper at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. During the Second World War (from 1939 to 1946) he was seconded to the Home Grown Timber Production Department of the Ministry of Supply as Divisional Officer for the West of Scotland. He was appointed CBE in 1952. From 1954 he worked for the National Trust for Scotland as Gardens Adviser and curator of Inverewe Garden until his death in 1960.
Dr Cowan was the author of many botanical and horticultural papers. In 1950 he published 'The Rhododendron Leaf', a work deemed of considerable importance. He was awarded the Loder Rhododendron Cup in 1941. The Royal Horticultural Society awarded him the Gold Veitch Memorial Medal in 1951 for his services to horticulture and for his work on the genus Rhododendron, and the Victoria Medal of Honour in 1955. Dr Cowan was President of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, a member of the Council of the National Trust for Scotland, and Vice-Chairman of the Scottish Gardens Committee of the Hydro-Electric Board for Scotland. He was also a fellow of the Linnean Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh and served on its Council from 1953 to 1956
John's wife, May Cowan, the youngest daughter of Stephen Walker Organe, missionary, was born Adeline May Organe in Madras on 26 December 1892. She attended school at Walthamstow Hall, Sevenoaks and Somerville College, Oxford (1912-1915), where she read for Honours in Botany and met her lifelong partner, John Macqueen Cowan. She was unable to take her degree until Oxford University finally awarded degrees to women in the 1920s.
From 1915 to 1919 May Cowan taught science subjects at Sherbourne School for Girls and at Polham Hall School. In 1919 she sailed for India and married the day after she arrived in Calcutta. For the next two years she joined her husband in expeditions collecting and classifying plants and catching elephants, vividly described in an unpublished monograph "The Forests of Bengal. Life with my husband in the Indian Forest Service" which she wrote at the age of eighty seven. Their first daughter, Joan Macqueen Cowan (deceased 1954) was born in India in 1922. Their second, Pauline May Cowan was born in England in 1926 but was very soon transported to India with her mother and sister. Their only son, Robert (later Sir Robert, deceased 1993) was born in 1932, when they were settled in Edinburgh, and named after his great-grandfather.
May Cowan shared many of her husband's botanical interests and pursuits and was also a keen member in Edinburgh of the Federation of University Women. When they moved to Inverewe Garden she was not only an enthusiastic host to many of its visitors who shared her interests in plants, but she herself tended the herbaceous border and rock garden. When her husband died in 1960 the National Trust for Scotland appointed her in his place. She was delighted at being awarded her first job since 1919, but she found life at Inverewe lonely in her husband's absence and retired after a year.
May Cowan was the first author (A M Cowan and J M Cowan) of a Government of Bengal publication "The Trees of Northern Bengal. Including Shrubs, Woody Climbers, Bamboos, Palms and Tree Ferns", Calcutta, 1929. After the death of her husband, using his notes and her own knowledge, she wrote "Inverewe. A Garden in the North-West Highlands" which was published in 1964. Although she was the sole author, her book was dedicated "to the memory of my husband, who left so much of himself at Inverewe".
Biographical information about John Macqueen Cowan mainly taken from professorship application: see GD1/1451/22. |