Robert Lloyd Praeger

Robert Lloyd Praeger by Sarah Cecilia Harrison, now in National Museums Northern Ireland

Robert Lloyd Praeger (25 August 1865 – 5 May 1953) was an Irish naturalist, writer and librarian.

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 Rev McAlister and then at nearby Sullivan Upper School.[1] 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 to 1906 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 became the first President of An Taisce, and of the Irish Mountaineering Club,[2] 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.[3]

"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.[4]

Praeger's publications

Robert Lloyd Praeger commemorative plaque

See also

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ Praeger, Robert Lloyd (1969). The Way that I Went: An Irishman in Ireland. Dublin: Allen Figgis. pp. 10–12. ISBN 0-900372-08-7.
  2. ↑ Irish Mountaineering Club
  3. ↑ Tim Robinson (2007) Connemara: Listening to the Wind, Dublin : Penguin Ireland ISBN 9781844880669
  4. ↑ Scannell, M. J. P. and Synnott, D. M. 1972. Census Catalogue of the Flora of Ireland. Dublin, The Stationery Office
  5. ↑ IPNI.  Praeger.
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