He was a middle child in a large family, with the plant physiologist Frederick Frost Blackman being the elder of his two older brothers.
He also gave occasional lecture courses at several University of London institutions,[1][2][3] and was a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge (1898–1904).
[1][3] In 1911, Blackman became the first professor of plant physiology and pathology at Imperial College of Science and Technology in London, where he spent the remainder of his career.
On reaching the compulsory retirement age in 1937, he became an emeritus professor of the University of London, but remained the director of the Research Institute of Plant Physiology until 1943, guiding its administration through the early years of the Second World War.
[1][2] Early during his time at the Natural History Museum, he accompanied Murray to the West Indies; they collected marine phytoplankton by having sea water pumped through silk bags, and published drawings of the shells in 1898.
[3] With collaborators across the country, he worked on many practical agricultural topics including plant nutrition, and chemical and physiological changes in fruit during ripening and storage.
[2] She was a sculptor who had learned from her aunt E. S. Mogridge to make models in wax, including flowers and insects, for museum displays and private collections.
[1][10][11] They had a daughter and two sons; Geoffrey Emett Blackman was a plant physiologist who became the University of Oxford's Sibthorpian professor of rural economy.