Edward J. Russell

Sir Edward John Russell (1872 to 1965) was a British soil chemist and agricultural scientist who directed Rothamsted Experimental Station from 1912 to 1943. Born at Frampton-on-Severn in Gloucestershire, he was educated at Carmarthen Presbyterian College, Aberystwyth and Manchester, and took a Doctor of Science in chemistry from the University of London in 1902. He was head of chemistry at the South Eastern Agricultural College, then a soil chemist at Rothamsted from 1907 to 1912, and succeeded Alfred Daniel Hall as director. He worked on soil chemistry and plant nutrition, hired R. A. Fisher for statistical research in 1919, and, concerned at the lack of international exchange of agricultural information, initiated the Imperial Agricultural Bureaux, later the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux. He received an OBE in 1918 for wartime work in the Food Production Department, was knighted in 1922, and presided over the British Association in 1948 and 1949. His books include Soil Conditions and Plant Growth and The Fertility of the Soil.