Pharmacy and lecturing West studied pharmacy, probably via an apprenticeship; his training involved plant identification and the use of the microscope. although another source states that he ran the shop until 1899. still describing himself as a lecturer in biology at the Municipal Technical College in 1911.
Botanical study and publishing At first, from 1878 to 1887, West published papers on roses,
lichens and mosses. He also contributed to ''Lees' Flora of Yorkshire''. W. Denison Roebuck commented: The practical self-training of the father and the parental and academic training of the son, based upon a combination of practical field-work and an appreciation of specific and varietal differentiation with a capacity for broad and sound generalization, began to yield fruit in no small degree. Theirs was no mere local study, the whole world was now their sphere of investigation, and the command of the complete literature of their subject and of innumerable gatherings from almost all parts of the globe, with the willing co-operation of European and American workers, enabled the two Wests to establish themselves among the foremost students of their subject. Roebuck described the man in his capacity as a botanist: He was a man of extraordinarily wide and varied range of information. He had a competent knowledge of all branches of field botany, and his attainments in plant
physiology and
morphology showed that, had he been specially interested in those branches of study, he would have made his mark as an original investigator. But it was as a student of the freshwater algae, and especially of the
Desmids that he obtained his world-wide reputation. In this department he was one of the foremost men of his time, and the numerous papers and memoirs contributed to various journals and to the Transactions and Proceedings of learned societies testify to his unflagging energy and zeal in the pursuit of his favourite study. As a systematist he has been for many years recognised as an authority on the freshwater algae, and he has also made valuable contributions, in numerous memoirs, to our knowledge of their distribution and biological relationships. In his latter years, West and his son G.S. West took an interest in the
ecology of
cryptogams. Roebuck enthused about this too: William West's remarkable knowledge about cryptogamic plants of all kinds and of their conditions of growth made him a unique personality in Britain, probably in Europe. He was an ecologist long before the term itself was coined, always fully conscious of the importance of the common and dominant forms. The
algological investigations which were now his main line of research were systematically and diligently carried on. Holidays were utilized to the full for visiting all parts of the British Islands, especially the outlying
montane regions of Scotland and Ireland,
North Wales and the
English Lakes. Many papers and memoirs were published in the
Journal of Botany by West and his son G.S. West on the subject of cryptogamic plants in all parts of the British Isles. They were associated with a worldwide team of botanists who produced papers about cryptogams in many countries, and the Wests also produced papers on the basis of information sent to them from abroad. However there was more to come, from the Wests: their study of the
phytoplankton of rivers and lakes. "In this the two Wests were the pioneer British workers, and they took up the task in characteristically full and systematic fashion". Aided by grants, they carried out "detailed field work" around the British Isles during vacations from 1900 onwards. In 1909 they reported the progress of this work in the
Proceedings of the Royal Society. This is what they discovered: From a biological point of view the British Lakes are of great interest; the researches of the two Wests showing that the lake plankton of extreme Western Europe, and particularly of the British Islands, differs completely from that of Central Europe, being characterised by the presence and dominance of Desmids. Their observations showed that Desmid-plankton occurred only in rich Desmid-areas, and that these areas were directly correlated with montane areas, with heavy and persistent rainfall, and most important of all, with the presence of the oldest rocks,
Archaean and the older
Palaeozoic rock-formations; and their success in working out this new line of research has produced significant results which were a revelation and surprise to Continental observers".
Other contributions West was secretary of the
Yorkshire Naturalists' Union botanical section, then president of the Union in 1899, which was "a significant mark of the appreciation of the esteem in which he was held by his fellow Yorkshiremen ... West was one of the band of able naturalists who were instrumental in making it the powerful and successful instrument of local scientific research which it has been ever since". He was a member of the
British Association and in 1900 served as secretary of its botanical section. He was a
Fellow of the Linnean Society from 17 March 1887. ==Selected publications==