From
Curtis's Botanical Magazine, vol. 23, pp.30-36:
[G]eneticist Dr Charles Chamberlain Hurst (1890-1947) ... came to Cambridge in 1922...At Cambridge he continued his research... and in 1932 published a key work
The Mechanism of Creative Evolution for which his wife Rona provided the illustrations. Hurst's main interest, however, was the cytology of the genus
Rosa....Much of Hurst's research was carried out in the University Botanic Garden, where he combined the study of the morphological characteristics of species with that of the genes and chromosomes, intending to establish exactly how garden roses had been developed from the ancestral wild species...Hurst fully intended that his work on roses would culminate in the publication of a monograph of the genus, but it was again interrupted by war. While working in the Royal Observer Corps, Hurst was struck by illness from which he never recovered, and in 1947 he died, leaving his work on
Rosa unfinished. Fortunately, Hurst's widow Rona, who had trained as a cytologist...., collated and edited his finding and presented them to the University....
[From
The Old Shrub Roses, p. 57:] C. C. Hurst (1870-1947) had already been engaged for some years in pioneer work on Heredity when Mendel's papers were discovered in 1900, and from that time he took a leading part ...in the foundation of the new science of Genetics. His experiments covered many plants and animals, including Man, and in 1909 he founded the Burbage Experiment Station for Genetics in Leicestershire.
[From A Rose Odyssey, p. 118:] ...in 1925...I stopped at Hinckley...to see two interesting men, father and son Hurst. The father was ninety six, and the son, known as Major Hurst, was a great student of Mendelism. Since then he has taken a degree of doctor at Cambridge University, given up the nursery, and become professor of genetics....vast collection of rose species both had accumulated for study and cross-breeding experiments. The place was at Burbage, three miles out of Hinckley...Since then the father has died and the son has sold the nursery to his superintendent, George Geary.
