1. Hugh Falconer MD FRS was a Scottish geologist, botanist, palaeontologist, and paleoanthropologist.
19 Facts About Hugh Falconer
1. 2.
Hugh Falconer studied the flora, fauna, and geology of India, Assam, Burma, and most of the Mediterranean islands and was the first to suggest the modern evolutionary theory of punctuated equilibrium.
3.
In 1826 Hugh Falconer graduated at the University of Aberdeen, where he studied natural history.
4.
Hugh Falconer became an assistant-surgeon on the Bengal establishment of the British East India Company in 1830.
5.
In 1832, Hugh Falconer became Superintendent of the Saharanpur botanical garden, India, succeeding John Royle.
6.
Hugh Falconer remained at Saharanpur until 1842, during which time he became widely known for his study of fossil mammals in the Siwalik Hills.
7.
Hugh Falconer published a geological description of the Siwalik Hills in 1834.
8.
In 1834 Hugh Falconer was asked by a Commission of Bengal to investigate the commercial feasibility of growing tea in India.
9.
Hugh Falconer returned from India in 1842 because of ill health.
10.
Hugh Falconer brought back 70 large chests of dried plants and 48 cases of fossils, bones and geological specimens.
11.
Hugh Falconer then travelled throughout Europe making geological observations, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1845.
12.
In 1847 Hugh Falconer became superintendent of the Calcutta Botanical Garden and professor of botany in the Medical College, Calcutta, near his older brother, Alexander Hugh Falconer, a Calcutta merchant.
13.
Hugh Falconer served as an advisor to the Indian government and the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of Bengal, the de facto colonial "Department of Agriculture".
14.
Hugh Falconer prepared an important report on the teak forests of Tenasserim, and this saved them from destruction by reckless felling.
15.
Hugh Falconer was originally a creationist who denied the fact of evolution.
16.
In June 1861, Hugh Falconer expressed respect in a letter to Darwin for receiving the book.
17.
In 1863, Hugh Falconer authored a monograph On the American Fossil elephant of the regions bordering the Gulf of Mexico.
18.
Hugh Falconer described some new mammalia from the Purbeck strata of Wessex.
19.
Hugh Falconer succumbed in London, England, on 31 January 1865 from rheumatic disease of the heart and lungs.