Brown, Robert, 1773–1858, Scottish botanist and botanical explorer. In 1801 he went as a naturalist on one of Matthew Flinders's expeditions to Australia, returning (1805) to England with valuable collections. In his Prodromus florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen (1810) he described Australian flora. A leading botanist of his day, he served as librarian to the Linnaean Society and to Sir Joseph Banks and later as curator at the British Museum. He observed Brownian movement in 1827, discovered the cell nucleus in 1831, and was the first to recognize gymnosperm as a distinct angiosperm. His studies of several plant families and of pollen were also notable.
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