Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker OM GCSI CB FRS (30 June 1817 ??10 December 1911) was one of the greatest British botanists and explorers of the 19th century.

Hooker was a founder of geographical botany, and Charles Darwin's closest friend. He was Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, for twenty years, in succession to his father, William Jackson Hooker, and was awarded the highest honours of British science.

On 11 November 1847 Hooker left England for his three-year-long Himalayan expedition