Biography
Professor Arthur Henry Reginald Buller, chair of the Department of Botany, University of Manitoba (1904-36), was born in Birmingham on August 19, 1874. He obtained his Ph.D. at Leipzig before joining the university. His best-known academic work was Researches in Fungi, 7 vols. (1909-34), for which he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1909, its President in 1927, and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1937. Unmarried, Buller spent his summers in England, and by 1938 had crossed the Atlantic 62 times. He was a member of the Psychical Research Society. Having published his limerick on "Relativity" in Punch, unsigned, on December 18, 1923, he spent some time afterwards defending his authorship against other claimants. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1974) attests to his authorship of this celebrated poem. See Who's Who and Why 1921, ed. B. M. Greene (Ottawa, 1921): 1272. Robarts Library F 5009 W62.
- Brooks, F. T. “Buller, Arthur Henry Reginald (1874-1944).” Rev. V. M. Quirke. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.
