Item ADH/2/23 - SC Harland, Brazil, Sir James Currie, Messrs Brown Baker and Baker to AD Hall

Extent: 7 letters, copy of a letter/report and photograph (photocopy)

SC Harland, Agricultural Institute, Brazil to AD Hall, Sir James Currie and solicitors? Brown, Baker and Baker: legal case against the Empire Cotton Growing Corporation, enquiry in Trinidad, dispute between Harland and Aage Skovsted, political climate in Brazil, complaints against the Imperial College ; mentions Sir James Currie, Briton-Jones, Briant, Dr Seager, Sir Geoffrey Evans, Harold Box, and Sir John Farmer. Photocopy of photograph of SC Harland and copy of letter/report detailing the dispute with Skovsted.

Admin History: Prof Sydney Cross Harland FRS FRSE (19 June 1891–8 November 1982) was a British agricultural botanist with considerable international experience. His area of expertise was especially in the growing of cotton. He studied Sciences (with a focus upon Geology) at King's College London graduating BSc in 1912 and gaining a doctorate (DSc) in 1919. In 1922 he left Britain to take up a teaching role in the Danish-owned island of St Croix (now part of the US Virgin Islands). In 1923 he became Professor of Botany at the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture in Trinidad. In 1926 he also became Director of the Cotton Research Station in Trinidad, continuing in this role until 1935. In 1940 he moved to Peru as Director of the Institute of Genetics within the National Agricultural Society of Peru. He returned to Britain in 1949 as a Reader in Botany at the University of Manchester being made the George Harrison Professor of Botany at the University of Manchester the following year, 1950, and retaining this post until 1958, when he was subsequently made an Emeritus Professor. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1943. In 1951 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.