1. William Roxburgh FRSE FRCPE FLS was a Scottish surgeon and botanist who worked extensively in India, describing species and working on economic botany.
21 Facts About William Roxburgh
1. 2.
William Roxburgh is known as the founding father of Indian botany.
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William Roxburgh published numerous works on Indian botany, illustrated by careful drawings made by Indian artists and accompanied by taxonomic descriptions of many plant species.
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William Roxburgh was the first to document the existence of the Ganges river dolphin.
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William Roxburgh studied medicine at Edinburgh University and matriculated around 1771 or 1772.
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William Roxburgh lived with the well-connected family of Dr John Boswell, living at "the back of the Meadows" in south Edinburgh during this period.
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William Roxburgh studied surgery under Dr Alexander Monro and learnt botany under John Hope.
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William Roxburgh's studies included mathematics and physics, which would make him interested in precise quantification later in life in studies on hemp.
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William Roxburgh joined an East India Company ship Houghton in 1772 serving under surgeon Richard Ballantyne.
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William Roxburgh studied the prospects of introducing sago and other food crops to help alleviate the effect of famine.
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William Roxburgh was invited to fill the position of Superintendent at the Calcutta Botanical Garden where the death of Colonel Robert Kyd had created a vacancy.
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William Roxburgh made rapid progress and acquired a good reputation and was later invited by the government of Bengal, to take charge of the Calcutta Botanical gardens from Colonel Robert Kyd in 1793 as Superintendent of the Company garden at Sibpur near Calcutta.
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William Roxburgh meticulously collected vast amounts of meteorological data for years, and is considered as a pioneer in the collection of tropical meteorological data, to an extent unrivalled elsewhere until the 1820s.
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William Roxburgh had begun collecting detailed meteorological data as soon as he set foot in India, at Madras, and is known to have taken measurements three times a day, using Ramsden barometers and Nairne thermometers, made by then reputed scientific instrument makers, Jesse Ramsden and Edward Nairne.
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William Roxburgh trained under John Hope, who was the curator of the Edinburgh botanical garden as well an experimental physiologist.
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William Roxburgh became a member of the Asiatic Society, to whose Transactions he contributed, from time to time, many valuable papers.
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William Roxburgh appears to have lived in, or close to, his original Edinburgh lodgings, then known as 4 Park Place or Street on the Meadows.
18.
William Roxburgh died there on 18 February 1815 and was buried nearby in Greyfriars Kirkyard.
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William Roxburgh's proposers were William Wright, Daniel Rutherford and John Walker.
20.
In 1802, William Roxburgh was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society held in Philadelphia.
21.
William Roxburgh was created Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh on arrival until death.