Dr Charles Edward Foister FRSE (17 August 1903 – 23 July 1989) was a British botanist and plant pathologist. He was Director of Scottish Agricultural Scientific Services in Edinburgh from 1957. He specialised in lichens and fungi.^[1]

Life

He was born in Cambridge in England on 17 August 1903, the son of Frederick W Foister and his wife Esther Elizabeth Smith.^[2] He was educated locally and won a place at the University of Cambridge graduating with a BA in 1925. He continued as a postgraduate taking a Diploma in Agricultural Science (1927). He later received a doctorate (PhD) from the University of Edinburgh in 1931.^[3]

He was employed as a plant pathologist in eastern Edinburgh for all of his working life. He became the official plant pathologist for the UK in 1938.^[4] He was an active member of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh.

In 1954, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Sir William Wright Smith, Stephen J Watson, Malcolm Wilson and Alexander Nelson.^[5]

He died at Colchester in Essex on 23 July 1989.

He never married and was presumed homosexual.

Publications

• The Relationship of Weather to Fungus and Bacterial Diseases (1935)
• Descriptions of New Fungi Causing Economic Diseases in Scotland (1940)
• Dry Rot Disease of Potato (1952)
• Mrs N L Alcock (1972)

Botanical references

References