William West, FLS (22 February 1848 – 14 May 1914) was an English pharmacist, botanist, microscopist and writer, particularly noted for his studies of freshwater algae.

He was the son of a cloth-dresser and a dressmaker, and his training as a pharmacist was probably via an apprenticeship in a chemist shop, which would have involved the study of plants.

He was self-trained in botany, and for some years he ran a microscopy partnership with Jean Claudius Tempère, selling slides.

He was a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, a president of the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union, and a member of the British Association.

[2][nb 5] The 1891 Census finds William still running the chemist shop, living with Hannah and two of their children at 15 Little Horton Lane, Bradford.

His naturalist colleague and Woodhouse Moor neighbour William Denison Roebuck (1851–1919)[16] said of him:[10] He was a man of warm enthusiasms, with a singular charm of manner and a quiet vein of genial humour, and those who, with the present writer, have been on most intimate terms with him for nearly forty years, can best appreciate what manner of man he was, and feel the greatness of the loss which they have sustained by his [death].

[2][10][5] The Bradford Weekly Telegraph said that West was still a pharmacist and druggist at the time of his death,[6] although another source states that he ran the shop until 1899.

[2] Although qualified in pharmacy, Bradford Technical College hired West as a lecturer in botany, and then in biology, pharmacology and bacteriology in 1886.

The microscopist Jean Claudius Tempère (1847–1926), who was then living in England, was also offering slides, and by 1883 the two men had formed a "slide-making partnership" under the commercial name S. Louis.

[5] The first volume of that series was promptly purchased in October 1904 by Thomas W. Hand, city librarian for Leeds Public Free Libraries, and catalogued as no.

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.

[5] Roebuck enthused about this too:[10] 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.

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.

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".

[10]West was secretary of the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union botanical section, then president of the Union in 1899,[2][5] 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".