Octavius William Borrell Explained

Honorific Prefix:Brother
Octavius William Borrell
Honorific Suffix:FMS
Birth Date:19 January 1916
Birth Place:Smyrna, Greece (now İzmir, Turkey)
Death Place:Bulleen, Victoria, Australia
Resting Place:Marist Brothers section, Kilmore Catholic Cemetery, Kilmore, Victoria, Australia
Other Names:Marie Octave[1]
Fields:Botany
Workplaces:Research associate, School of Botany, University of Melbourne
Education:Master of Science Without Examination (Botany)
Alma Mater:The University of Melbourne
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Octavius William Borrell (19 January 1916 – 18 July 2007) was a Marist Brother, missionary school teacher and botanist.

Life until 1952

Octavius William Borrell was born in Greek Smyrna (today İzmir, Turkey) on 19 January 1916.[2] In 1931, at the age of 15, he joined the Marist Order, and continued his secondary schooling at the Marist Brothers training college at Herakleion.[2] [3] From September 1935 until 1952, Brother William taught at Collège Sainte Jeanne D'Arc, a French–English bilingual school in Shanghai, with additional teaching at Collège Saint Ignace.[3] [4] During this period, he continued his own education, completing his baccalauréat.[2]

While in Shanghai, Borrell became associated with the Musée Heude, formerly the Zikawei Museum (徐家汇博物院) located on the grounds of Université l'Aurore, a private French-language university, located in the Shanghai French Concession.[3] [4] From 1942 to 1945 he was the curator of museum's botanical department, and also collected specimens for the institution.[5] [6] With a colleague at the museum, Brother Paul August, together they wrote the manuscript, Flore de Changhai.[6] Around the same time, a second manuscript on the trees and shrubs of Shanghai was prepared with a student, Xu Bingsheng.[6]

During the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, Borrell and other missionaries spent 3 years in an internment camp. In 1952, Borrell left China to work in other schools. The contents of the Musée Heude was ultimately divided between several different government institutions, including the Shanghai Natural History Museum.[7] It is unclear if any of the plant collections made in this period have been preserved.

Teaching after 1952, and retirement

Borrell continued to teach in schools, including in Dumfries, Scotland, in Malaya, Sarawak, and Taiwan.[8] He went on to teach at St. Francis Xavier's College, Kowloon, Hong Kong[9] From 1974 to 1979, and again in 1980, he was posted to Saint Xavier's Secondary School on Kairiru Island in Wewak, East Sepik, Papua New Guinea.[10] [11]

He was finally posted to Melbourne in 1980, after which he retired and “"began his work to complete the many projects that he had begun over the years," including completing his studies into the floras of Kairiru, and of Shanghai. In 1981 and 1985 he returned to Kairiru to make further botanical collections.

Return to Shanghai and Flora of the Shanghai Area

In 1991, Borrell returned to Shanghai for six months, where he worked with staff in the botany department of the Shanghai Natural History Museum, and became reacquainted with Professor Xu Bingsheng (徐炳声) of Fudan University.[12] Borrell visited the Shanghai Botanical Garden, and collected on the rapidly urbanising outskirts of Shanghai, to ultimately produce an English-language translation and revision of his Trees and Shrubs of Shanghai manuscript, which became the multi-volume Flora of the Shanghai Area.

Brother William died on 18 July 2007 at Bulleen, Victoria, Australia, aged 91.

Published major works

Significant herbarium collections

Unpublished papers

Notes and References

  1. . March 2008 . Brothers who died in 2007 . FMS Message . Rome . Istituto dei Fratelli Maristi. Casa generalizia. . 5 March 2022 . 23 . 2. 113–115.
  2. . 14 December 2007 . Obituary: Brother Octavius William Borrell . Virtute . Balwyn, Victoria . Marcellan College . 5 March 2022 . 23 . 2. 4–5.
  3. Augustine Doronila . December 2015 . How a rare botanical Filipiniana came to the Baillieu Library . University of Melbourne Collections . Melbourne, Victoria . The University of Melbourne . 5 March 2022 . 17. 14–23. 11343/118384 .
  4. Octavius William Borrell . 1991 . A short history of the Heude Museum, 'Musee Heude.' 1858-1952: Its Botanist and Plant Collector. . Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society . 5 March 2022 . 31. 183–191.
  5. Book: Hsu, P.S. . 1995 . Flora of the Shanghai Area 上海植物誌 Volume 1 and 2 . v . Foreword. Brown Prior Anderson Pty Ltd . Collingwood, Victoria .
  6. Book: Borrell, O.W. . 1995 . Flora of the Shanghai Area 上海植物誌 Volume 1 and 2 . Brown Prior Anderson Pty Ltd . Collingwood, Victoria .
  7. Michelle Qiao . 10 February 2017 . Jesuits leave mark on country's scientific history . Shanghai Daily. Shanghai.
  8. Web site: Borrell, William (1916 -) . G.J. McCarthy . 8 September 2015 . Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation . Swinburne University of Technology . 7 March 2022.
  9. Web site: Deceased Brothers: Br. Octavius William Borrell . Marist Brothers General House, Rome. . Institute of the Marist Brothers - General House, Rome . 5 March 2022.
  10. Stone . B.C. . 1991 . Book review: An Annotated Checklist of the Flora of Kairiru Island, New Guinea. . Micronesica . 24 . 1 . 165–167 . 5 March 2022.
  11. Book: French Smith, Michael . 2002 . Village on the Edge: Changing Times in Papua New Guinea . Honolulu . University of Hawaii Press . 183, footenote 1 . 9780824865450.
  12. Book: Borrell, O.W. . 2002 . Flora of the Shanghai Area 上海植物誌 Volume 3 . Marcellin College . Bulleen, Victoria .
  13. Web site: Occurrence records . The Australasian Virtual Herbarium . . 5 March 2022.
  14. Web site: Occurrence records . The Australasian Virtual Herbarium . . 5 March 2022.
  15. Book: Borrell, O. William . 1989 . An Annotated Checklist of the Flora of Kairiru Island, New Guinea . Bulleen, Vic. . Marcellin College . vii, ix . 0731644638.
  16. Note that these collections do not appear in the PNG Plants database. See: Conn, B.J., Lee, L.L. & Kiapranis, R. (2004+). PNGplants database: Plant collections from Papua New Guinea (https://www.pngplants.org/PNGdatabase.html)
  17. Web site: [William Borrell papers]. ca. 1940-2000. ]. . The Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria Library . . 5 March 2022 . Papers of William Borrell mostly related to his study of the flora of China and Kairiru Island: includes drawings reproduced in, and correspondence relating to the sale of, An annotated checklist of the flora of Kairiru Island, New Guinea; a manuscript Flora of Shanghai; a list of trees and shrubs of Shanghai (1952, two versions); flowers named after the Virgin Mary; photographs of William Borrell. Also two folders of descriptions of plants..
  18. Web site: Shanghai Trees and Shrubs . O. William Borrell . The Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria Library . . 5 March 2022.
  19. Web site: Borrell, William (1916). The University of Melbourne eScholarship Research Centre . Bright Sparcs: Archival and Heritage Sources . . 5 March 2022.

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