Background
PRAIN, David was born on July 11, 1857 in Scotland.
PRAIN, David was born on July 11, 1857 in Scotland.
Studied at Parish School, Fettercairn. Gram. School, Aberdeen. Universities Aberdeen and Edinburgh Demonstrator of Anatomy, College of Surgeons, Edinburgh, 1882-1883, and University of Aberdeen, 1883-1818S4.
Master of Arts.
Bachelor of Medicine. Doctor of Laws.
In 1878. After teaching for two years at Ramsgate College, he returned to Aberdeen and thence to the University of Edinburgh, earning his Doctor of Medicine in 1883 with highest honours. He was demonstrator of anatomy at the College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1882 and 1883, and at the University of Aberdeen in 1883 and 1884. In 1884 Prain was recommended to Sir George King (1840–1909), home on leave from his position as director of the Royal Botanic Garden at Calcutta and looking for a medical student with botanical interests to enter the Indian Medical Service.
Prain duly went to India as a physician / botanist in the Indian Medical Service, and in 1887 was appointed curator of the Calcutta herbarium.
In 1898 he was promoted director of the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta as well as the Botanical Survey of India, and superintendent of Cinchona Cultivation in Bengal, remaining there until 1905. From 1898 to 1905 he also served as Professor of Botany at the Medical College of Calcutta.
In 1905 he became Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. In May 1905, Prain was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
In 1887 Prain married Margaret Caird Thomson, daughter of Reverend William Thomson of Belhevie, south of Aberdeen.
They had one son, Theodore, who was killed in World War I. Prain died at Whyteleaf, Kent, on 16 March 1944.
Royal Society; Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences]
In 1907 he was awarded an honorary doctorate of philosophy at the Linnaeus" tercentenary in Uppsala, Sweden, and became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1912.
Spouse 1887, Margaret,daughter of Reverend West. Thomson, Master of Arts, Belhelvie.