Background
Miles J. Berkeley was born on April 1, 1803, at Biggin Hall, Benefield, Northamptonshire, the second son of Charles Berkeley and of the sister of Paul Sandby Munn, the well-known watercolor artist.
Oundle, Northamptonshire, PE8 4GH England, United Kingdom
Miles Berkeley received his early education at the grammar school at Oandle till 1817.
Lawrence Sheriff Street Rugby, Warwickshire, CV22 5EH England, United Kingdom
From 1817 to 1821, Miles Berkeley studied at Rugby School.
St. Andrew's Street, Cambridge, England, United Kingdom
In 1821 as a scholar, Miles Berkeley entered Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he graduated Bachelor's degree in 1825, proceeding Master's degree in 1828.
The Linnean Society of London, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BF, United Kingdom
Miles J. Berkeley was elected to the Linnean Society in 1836.
Academy Office, Jägerberg 1 06108, Halle (Saale), Germany
In 1857, Miles Berkeley became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
6 - 9 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AG, England, United Kingdom
In June 1879, Miles J. Berkeley was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Botanist clergyman scientist cryptogamist
Miles J. Berkeley was born on April 1, 1803, at Biggin Hall, Benefield, Northamptonshire, the second son of Charles Berkeley and of the sister of Paul Sandby Munn, the well-known watercolor artist.
Berkeley received his early education at the grammar school at Oandle and then he went to Rugby in 1817. In 1821 as a scholar, he entered Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he graduated Bachelor's degree in 1825, proceeding Master's degree in 1828.
In 1826, Berkeley entered the clergy, beginning his career as curate of St. John’s, Margate. In 1833 he became perpetual curate of Apethorpe and Woodnewton, Northamptonshire; in 1868 he moved, on his appointment as vicar, to Sibbertoft.
To support his family, Berkeley depended almost entirely on his meager clerical stipend, which for many years he supplemented by keeping a small boarding school for boys. His continued straitened circumstances were reflected in the grant of a Civil List pension of £100 per year in 1867.
While at school at Rugby, Berkeley became intensely interested in natural history, particularly in animals, and built up an extensive shell collection. His first publications were on zoology and were illustrated with his own fine colored drawings. Later his bent toward biology was greatly fostered by his close acquaintance with J. S. Henslow, professor of botany at Cambridge and a friend of Charles Darwin. Probably encouraged by three well-known contemporary cryptogamists - William Henry Harvey of Trinity College, Dublin; Robert Kaye Greville of Edinburgh; and Captain Dugald Carmichael of Appin - Berkeley gave up his zoological studies and began investigations on the lower plants. In 1833 he produced his Gleanings of British Algae, in which he described in detail and with color plates the structure of a number of marine and freshwater species. Soon Berkeley became engrossed in his studies of fungi. The work that established his preeminence as a mycologist was his account of fungi, which was prepared at the invitation of William Jackson Hooker for a volume of Sir James Edward Smith’s The English Flora. The meticulously accurate descriptions, mostly drawn from living material, remain unsurpassed in their construction.
Between 1837 and 1883 Berkeley published, in the later years in collaboration with Christopher Edmund Broome, a series of papers entitled "Notices of British Fungi" in the Annals and Magazine of Zoology and Botany (later called the Annals and Magazine of Natural History). Over the years a vast amount of exotic material from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, was referred to Berkeley, and he became the accepted authority for information on mycological matters.
His pioneer researches established that potato blight was the result of the ravages of Phylophthora infestans, but this was merely one of a series of investigations on pathogenic fungi that he undertook between 1854 and 1880; his important results ate to be found in the articles that he published in the Gardeners Chronicle. Berkeley’s most distinguished morphological investigations concerned the structure of the hymenium, and it was he who originally established the constant presence of basidia with apically borne spores in a large group of fungi, thus laying the basis of the primary classification into Basidiomycetes (with spores produced externally) and Ascomycetes (with spores formed within a sac, or ascus). In all, he published over 400 papers on fungi, either alone or in collaboration. In all, he published over 400 papers on fungi, either alone or in collaboration. Miles J. Berkeley died on July 30, 1889, at his vicarage, Sibbertoft, near Market Harborough.
Miles Berkeley was ordained in 1826, and his first clerical duty was the curacy of St. John's, Margate. In 1833 he became Perpetual Curate of Apethorpe and Wood Newton, Northamptonshire, and resided at the neighbouring village of King's Cliffe. In 1868 he was appointed Vicar of Sibbertoft, near Market Harborough.
Miles J. Berkeley was a man of splendid presence and great refinement, and had a sound classical background.
In 1830, Miles Berkeley married Cecelia Emma Campbell; the couple had fifteen children.