The Soil; an Introduction to the Scientific Study of of the Growth of Crops

by Daniel Hall

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382 pages, Hardcover

Published November 18, 2015

About the author

Sir (Alfred) Daniel Hall (1864–1942), was an agricultural educationist and researcher

Hall was born on 22 June 1864 in Rochdale, Lancashire. He was the eldest of five children born to Edwin Hall, a flannel manufacturer, and his wife, Mary Ann Billett, the daughter of Alfred Birks, a Manchester salesman. Hall was educated first at the Pickles Academy in Rochdale, and then at Manchester grammar school from 1877 to 1881. In 1881 he was elected to a Brackenbury scholarship in natural sciences, and attended Balliol College, Oxford, where he obtained a first-class degree in Natural Science (Chemistry) in 1884. After leaving Oxford in 1885 he became a schoolmaster.

In 1891 he moved to Surrey to become an Oxford University extension lecturer. This move "brought him into the world of agricultural science and education in which he was to spend the rest of his life". He spent three years as an extension lecturer, teaching on chemistry. In 1894 he was appointed as the first principal of the South Eastern Agricultural College, in Wye, Kent.

In 1902 he then moved from Wye to take up a post as director of the Rothamsted Experimental Station in Harpenden, Hertfordshire.

At the age of almost 63, he was offered (and accepted) the directorship of the John Innes Horticultural Institution. He had been a member of their council since 1919.