Harold William Taylor Wager, British botanist, mycologist, educationist and Doctor of Science (DSc), was the son of John William Wager and Mary Ann Saunders, born Hawker, and an older brother of Horace Athelston Wager*. He lectured on botany in the Yorkshire College, Leeds (later part of Victoria University), and was an examiner in the University of Cambridge and other universities. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (1904), and of the Linnean Society. In 1890 he became a member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, serving as president of Section K (Botany) in 1905. That year he attended the joint meeting of the association with its South African counterpart in South Africa. While in Pretoria he measured the Wonderboom and contributed "A brief description of the Wonderboom, Pretoria" to the Addresses and papers... (Vol. 3, pp. 539-541) published after the meeting. His presidential address to Section K, delivered in Johannesburg on 29 August, was a comprehensive review of the differentiation of structures in plant cells. The paper was included in its entirety in the British Association's Report for 1905 (pp. 562-584).
Wager was elected president of the British Mycological Society for 1910 and 1919, and president of the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union in 1913. His publications included Bad air and bad health (with A.E.M. Herbert, 1891, 23pp), Plant cytology (1899-1904), "On the effect of gravity upon the movements and aggregation of... micro-organisms" (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1910, 58pp), Notes on the blue-green algae... (1914, 48pp), and papers on the biology of fungi, bacteria and yeast plants. Later in his career he became inspector of schools for the Board of Education. In 1894 he married Winifred Miall.
