William Griffith was a London botanist. He was the son of a London merchant, born on March 4, 1810, at Ham Common. Having finished school he began to prepare for the medical profession and was apprenticed to a surgeon in the West end of London. About 1829 he commenced attendance at the classes in the newly established University College. He had earlier in life shown an interest in natural history but was now specially devoted to botany. He attended Lindley's lectures, and also studied medical botany under Mr Anderson at the Apothecaries' Garden in Chelsea. There he obtained the Linnean Gold Medal given by the Society of Apothecaries. At this time also he was a frequent visitor to Kew Gardens where he was on good terms with the head gardener and also came under the influence of Mr Bauer the great botanical draughtsman of his day. Griffith was never tired of expressing his admiration for Bauer as an accurate observer. During his vacations Griffith made botanical excursions in England, carrying his light baggage and his equipment for collecting plants.
That the training that Griffith received in botany in the London University of that date was a sound one is shown by his power of facing the most various problems when cast on his own resources immediately at the close of his University training. The soundness of his training is further shown by the small pieces of original work he had published before leaving England at the age of 22. Not only had he made some of the illustrations for Lindley's _Introduction to Botany_ and had described the flower and the structure of the wood of _Phytocrene gigantea_ in Wallich's _Plantae Asiaticae Rariores_, but (a noteworthy indication of his interest in Cryptogams at this time) he had supplied an account of the structure and development of _Targionia hypophylla_ to be appended to Mirbel's classic monograph on the anatomy and physiology of _Marchantia polymorpha_--published in 1832.
His medical studies finished, Griffith sailed from England in May 1832, he arrived at Madras in September and was appointed Assistant-Surgeon on the Madras establishment in the service of the East India Company. His scientific work was done in the intervals of a busy life. Only a man of great energy and enthusiasm and possessed of great powers of physical endurance could have done the work that Griffith crowded into the 12½ years, between his landing in India and his death at Malacca before the age of 35 on February 9, 1845. This time was all spent in the East Indies--he never returned to England.