Professor William Edwyn Isaac
Botanist
(ABGS 1919–1921)
W.E. Isaac
William Edwyn Isaac was born 5th June 1906, in Penygraig, Rhondda, the son of John Isaac (1875–1964) and his wife Leah (née Payne) (1878–1965). His parents came from Williamstown, Rhondda and Llansamlet respectively. John Isaac was an insurance superintendent with the Britannic Assurance Co. Ltd., which entailed rather frequent moves within south Wales. In Aberdare the family lived in a large house in Abernant Road, named Glascoed. The Isaacs raised four children – William and his three sisters, Gwyneira, Catherine Eluned (Kitty)1, and Sinai Megan. As young children they were involved in the activities of Nazareth Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Chapel, situated at the bottom of Abernant Road. Local newspaper reports mention the participation of William, and his sisters Kitty and Gwyneira in various events at the chapel conducted in the Welsh language.2
W.E.Isaac attended the Town Council Elementary School, (now Caradog), and the Higher Standard School (Gadlys), before entering the Boys’ County School in January1919.
He left school from the fourth form in June 1921 without having taken his School Certificate exams which, if he had completed his studies, would have followed in the fifth form. He went directly as an apprentice pharmaceutical chemist to Boots Cash Chemist Co. Ltd.
There is no trace of what he did between leaving school and the subsequent four years until we learn from a Western Mail article that he had obtained a 1st class degree in botany in 1928 from U.C. Cardiff — presumably starting on his degree in 1925. In February 1930 he was reported to be the joint winner of the Foyle Prize at Cardiff. Then, a few months later in June 1930, we see in the same newspaper that he was awarded a Ph.D. degree.
Later that same year he was present at the Birmingham Natural History and Philosophy Society’s Cenversazione at the university where he delivered a lecture in which he compared the flora of the British Isles with that found in America.
Then in 1933, he published a paper on the drought resistance of Pelvetia canaliculate, (a common brown seaweed), which he had studied previously in 1927 on the shore at Port Eynon on the coast of the Gower Peninsula. However, the paper gives his address as the Botany Department at Birmingham University. A second paper published in 1934 in the Journal of Ecology indicated that he had conducted this research whist he had been a member of staff at the Birmingham department. There is no indication of when his appointment there commenced.
In 1933 he accepted a position to work in South Africa on a project concerning the transport of fruit under low temperatures. In November 1935, he moved to a permanent position as a plant physiologist at the Government Low Temperature Research Laboratories in Cape Town. Towards the end of the 1940s, he returned to the University of Cape Town and continued his work on seaweed.
A paper dated March 1951, in the Journal of Ecology indicates that he was working at the Schonland Laboratory of Botany at Rhodes University College, Grahamstown, a town now known as Makhanda. He had been appointed Professor of Botany there in 1948.
In 1953 he had returned to Cape Town as Head of the Botany Department at the University of Cape Town, then shortly afterwards he was promoted to Professor delivering his inaugural lecture in April 1955. He continued there until to 1961
Due to his and his wife’s opposition to Apartheid in South Africa, he joined the ‘brain drain’ that took place from South Africa in the early 1960s.3 The family moved to Kenya in 1961 where William was appointed Head of the Department of Botany at Nairobi University College (now the University of Nairobi). Whilst there he established the Moana Research Station for Marine Studies4, Diani, some 60 km south west of Mombasa.
He retired in 1970 and finally left Africa. He
and his wife moved to Blairgowrie, Mornington Peninsula, about 90 km
from Melbourne, to be near two of their children. Being on a peninsula
he was surrounded by the sea — an ideal location for
a retired marine botanist. After twenty-five years of retirement,
Isaac died in 1995 aged 90.
In 1936 Isaac married Frances Margaret Leighton, (1909–2006), a botanist who acquired a strong academic reputation of her own. The couple raised twin boys, born in 1937, and one daughter born 1948. The two boys, Rhys and Glynn, had very distinguished academic careers, almost certainly eclipsing that of their father.
Rhys Llewelyn Isaac, (1937–2010), was an historian of American history, winning the Pulitzer Prize, (History Category), in 1983 for his book The Transformation of Virginia 1740–1760. He was Professor of American History La Trobe University, Melbourne, (1971–91).
The other twin, the anthropologist Glynn Isaac, (1937–1985), worked at the University of California, Berkeley, (for 17 years), but concluded his career as a Professor of Anthropology, (from 1983), at Harvard University, and as Curator of Paleolithic Archaeology at the Peabody Museum. His two daughters bore the names Gwyneira and Ceri.
Both Rhys and Glynn spent some time in the United Kingdom where they studied for their Ph.D. degrees. Rhys at Balliol College (Oxford), earning his Ph.D. in 1962, and Glynn at Peterhouse Cambridge earning his B.A. in 1961, and Ph.D. in 1969.
Footnotes
- In April 1933, Kitty Isaac married Arthur ap Gwynn Jones, who was librarian at UCW Aberystwyth. Jones was the son of the leading Welsh poet, scholar, literary critic, novelist, translator, and journalist Professor T. Gwynn Jones also of the university at Aberystwyth.
- His proficiency in the Welsh language was rewarded at the 1918 National
Eisteddfod of Wales in Neath, when he and Myfanwy Williams of Tanybryn
Street, Aberdare, won the under-16 impromptu conversation in Welsh
competition.
Later in Africa, Isaac became an overseas member of The Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion. - The Observer, 6th August 1961, page3
- Diani Beach is about 500km from Isaac’s former base in Nairobi.
Acknowledgements
- Mr Camwy MacDonald, a relative of W.E.Isaac, for the photograph.
Sources
- William Edwyn Isaac in Wicipedia, https://cy.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Edwyn_Isaac
- Glynn Isaac in Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glynn_Isaac
- Rhys Isaac in Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhys_Isaac
- Frances Margaret Isaac, (née Leighton), in Wikipedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Margaret_Leighton - Numerous articles in archived copies of The Birmingham Gazette, The Aberdare Leader, and Rhondda Leader.
CR, February 2025