Hugh Charles Sampson

Hugh Charles Sampson (1878 to 1953) was a British agronomist and economic botanist. Born at Shimla, he studied at Bedford School and the University of Edinburgh and served in the department of agriculture in the Transvaal from 1903. In 1905 he moved to the Madras Presidency in India as an agricultural expert and in 1906 was among the first officers of the Indian Agricultural Service. He worked on agricultural improvement through newer implements and on introducing long staple cotton from Cambodia, and was made Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire in 1921. In 1923 he left the post of director of agriculture, Madras, and went to Nyasaland under the Empire Cotton Growing Corporation to establish cotton seed supplies. From 1927 he was the first economic botanist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, published lists of the cultivated crops of the British Empire and retired in 1938.