Department of Botany

 
Minutes of Senate and Professorial Board show no consistency in the use of the term 'school' and 'department'; contrast the list of 7 'Schools' in Senate minutes Dec 1881 [pp.139-40, G1/1/6, with 'departments' in Professorial Board minutes Oct 1884 p. 55, G2/1/1]. The term 'Botany School' was frequently used in Lawson's correspondence [G50 series 4, 9]. A 1925 publication of the Sydney University Union 'The University of Sydney' describes the stone building dating from 1913 and known in more recent decades as the Botany building, as the 'School of Botany. Senate Minutes in 1914 refer to the building for the 'Botany Department' [G1/1/14, p. 114]. Lawson's successor to the Chair of Botany, T G Osborn, writes 'Botanical Department (Botany School)'. [G50/4] The first appearance of university by-laws on departments /schools is in the University Calendar 1976 CH VIII 22-26. That the 'department' was not a defined administrative entity is reflected in the advertisement for the Chair of Biology in the field of Genetics, January 1963: 'The Chair of Biological Sciences was established by uniting the former chairs of Botany and Zoology with this Chair to form the core of a multi-professorial School' [G3/13/64307]. The new by-laws do not define 'department' as stated at the meeting of Professorial Board in December 1973.

Following a proposal by the Professors of Botany and Zoology to the Vice-Chancellor in April 1962 to amalgamate the Botany and Zoology Departments, Senate approved the formation of a School of Biological Sciences, and the following steps were taken to implement such formation:
1) the title of the Professor of Botany to be altered to that of Professor of Biology', and the title of Challis Professor of Zoology to that of Challis Professor of Biology, such changes to be effective from 1st January 1963. [1962 Report of Senate].