Hugh Falconer

Infobox_Scientist
name = Hugh Falconer

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image_width = 220px
caption = Hugh Falconer
birth_date = birth date|1808|2|29
birth_place = Forres, Scotland
death_date = death date|1865|7|31
death_place = London, England
residence = Scotland, India, England
citizenship = British
nationality = Scottish
ethnicity = Scottish
field = Geology, Botany, Paleontology
work_institutions = Saharanpur Botanical Gardens
Calcutta Medical College
Agric. Hort. Soc. Bengal
alma_mater = University of Aberdeen
University of Edinburgh
doctoral_advisor = Robert Jameson
known_for = Punctuated Equilibrium
prizes = Wollaston Medal 1837

Hugh Falconer MD, FRS (February 29 1808 – July 31 1865 [ [http://books.google.com/books?id=RCwJAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA161&lpg=PA158&dq=%22hugh+falconer%22+bust&source=web&ots=TbAsLAu-hE&sig=YELMZjl_StbeY9TURl6erirRyvo#PPA160,M1 G. T. Bettany, "Hugh Falconer", "Dictionary of National Biography," vol. XVIII, New York and London, Macmillan and Smith, Elder (1889), p. 161.] ] ), was a distinguished Scottish geologist, botanist, palaeontologist and paleoanthropologist. He studied the flora, fauna and geology of India, Assam and Burma, and made the first discovery of the modern evolutionary theory of punctuated equilibrium. He may also have been the first person to discover a fossil ape.

Falconer was the youngest son of David Falconer of Forres, Elginshire. In 1826 Hugh Falconer graduated at the University of Aberdeen, where he studied natural history. He afterwards studied medicine in the University of Edinburgh, taking the degree of M.D. in 1829. During this period he zealously attended the botanical classes of Prof. R. Graham (1786-1845), and those on geology by Prof. Robert Jameson, the teacher of Charles Darwin.

Falconer became an assistant-surgeon on the Bengal establishment of the British East India Company in 1830. Upon his arrival in Bengal he made an examination of the fossil bones from Ava, upper Burma in the possession of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. His description of the fossils, published soon afterwards, gave him a recognized position among the scientists of India. Early in 1831 he was posted to the army station at Meerut, India, in the North Western Provinces.

Siwálik Hills

Falconer became Superintendent of the Saharánpur botanical garden [ [http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/online-ex/art-themes//india/more/lily_more_info.htm "The Saharánpur Botanic Garden", Natural History Museum, London] ] , India from 1832 to 1842 during which time he became widely known for his study of fossil mammals in the Siwálik Hills. Falconer observed long periods of evolutionary stasis in these mammals with short periods of rapid evolutionary change throughout geological time. This research shows great foresight; Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould developed the same basic theory a century later, a theory known as punctuated equilibrium.

Falconer and his associates may have made the first discovery of a fossil ape, in the 1830s in the Neogene deposits in the Siwálik Hills. [Kenneth A. R. Kennedy and Russell L. Ciochon, "A canine tooth from the Siwálik: first recorded discovery of a fossil ape?" "Journal of Human Evolution," Vol. 14, No. 3 (July, 1999). ISSN 0393-9375 (Print) 1824-310X (Online).] In the Tertiary strata of the Siwálik Hills in 1831 Falconer discovered bones of crocodiles, tortoises and other animals. With others, he later brought to light a sub-tropical fossil fauna of unexampled extent and richness, including remains of Mastodon, the colossal ruminant Sivatherium, and the enormous extinct tortoise Colossochelys Atlas. Falconer also published a geological description of the Siwálik Hills in 1834. For these valuable discoveries he and Proby Cautley (1802-1871) together received the Wollaston Medal from the Geological Society of London, its highest award, in 1837.

In 1834 Falconer was asked by a Commission of Bengal to investigate the feasibility of growing tea commercially in India, where black tea was introduced on his recommendation to be competitive with Chinese tea. ["Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911."]

Falconer left India in 1842, because of ill health. He brought with him 70 large chests of dried plants and 48 cases of fossils, bones and geological specimens. [ [http://www.falconermuseum.co.uk/founders.html The Friends of the Falconer Museum] ] He then travelled throughout Europe making geological observations and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1845. Continuing in the service of the British East India Company as a naturalist, he pursued research at the British Museum and East India House and prepared casts of the most remarkable fossils for the leading museums of Europe.

Calcutta

In 1847 Falconer became superintendent of the Calcutta Botanical Garden and professor of botany in the Medical College, Calcutta, near his older brother, Alexander Falconer, a Calcutta merchant. 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". He prepared an important report on the teak forests of Tenasserim, and this saved them from destruction by reckless felling. Through his recommendation, the cultivation of the cinchona in the Indian empire was introduced for the medicinal use of its bark in the treatment of malaria.

Having to leave India again in 1855 because of ill health, he spent the remainder of his life examining and comparing fossil species in England and the Continent corresponding to those which he had discovered in India, notably the species of mastodon, elephant and rhinoceros. He also described some new mammalia from the Purbeck strata of Wessex. Turning to the subject of human origins, he reported on the bone caves of Sicily, Gibraltar, Gower and Brixham.

Falconer was vice-president of the Royal Society 1863-1864. Although suffering from exposure and overwork, Falconer returned hastily from Gibraltar to support Charles Darwin's claim to the Copley Medal in 1864. Falconer succumbed in London, England, on 31 July, 1865 [ [http://books.google.com/books?id=RCwJAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA161&lpg=PA158&dq=%22hugh+falconer%22+bust&source=web&ots=TbAsLAu-hE&sig=YELMZjl_StbeY9TURl6erirRyvo#PPA160,M1 G. T. Bettany, "Hugh Falconer", "Dictionary of National Biography," vol. XVIII, New York and London, Macmillan and Smith, Elder (1889), pp. 158-161.] ] from rheumatic disease of the heart and lungs. His body was interred at Kensal Green. The flower "Rhododendron falconeri" was named after Falconer by Joseph Dalton Hooker.

Falconer's botanical notes, with 450 coloured drawings of Kashmiri and Indian plants, were deposited in the library at Kew Gardens, together with some of the specimens he collected. A marble bust was placed in the rooms of the Royal Society of London, and another in the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta. A competitive Falconer scholarship of £100 per year was created for graduates in science or medicine of the University of Edinburgh.

[http://falconermuseum.co.uk The Falconer Museum] in Forres exhibits the story of Hugh Falconer as well as stories of local and Scottish interest.

References

Works

* Hugh Falconer and Proby T. Cautley, "Fauna Antiqua Sivalensis, being the Fossil Zoology of the Sewalik Hills, in the North of India, Part I, Proboscidea," London (1846), with a series of 107 plates by G. H. Ford appearing between 1846 and 1849.
* "Palæontological memoirs and notes of the late Hugh Falconer," edited, with a biographical sketch, by Charles Murchison, M.D., 2 vols., London, R. Hardwicke (1868). OCLC: 2847098.
* [http://darwin.lib.cam.ac.uk/bib_all.html Hugh Falconer, Darwin Correspondence Project: extended bibliography]
* Falconer's works were documented in the Royal Society's "Catalogue of Scientific Papers," vol. ii (1968).

Literature

* Patrick J. Boylan, "The Falconer papers, Forres," Leicester: Leicestershire Museums, Art Galleries and Records Service (1977).
* Grace, Lady Prestwich, "Essays descriptive and biographical," Edinburgh and London, William Blackwood (1901).
* Charles T. Gaudin, "Modifications apportées par M. Falconer à la faune du Val d'Arno", "Bulletin des Séances de la Société Vaudoise des Sciences Naturelles" 6: 130-1 (1859).
* Patrick J. Boylan, "The controversy of the Moulin-Quignon jaw: the role of Hugh Falconer," in "Images of the Earth: Essays in the History of the Environmental Sciences," Ludmilla J. Jordanova and Roy S. Porter, eds., Chalfont St. Giles, Bucks., British Society for the History of Science. (1979) ISBN 0906450004
* Leonard G. Wilson, "Brixham Cave and Sir Charles Lyell's . . . the Antiquity of man: the roots of Hugh Falconer's attack on Lyell," "Archives of Natural History" 23: 79-97 (1996).
* Kenneth A. R. Kennedy and Russell L. Ciochon, "A canine tooth from the Siwaliks: first recorded discovery of a fossil ape?" "Journal of Human Evolution," Vol. 14, No. 3 (July, 1999). ISSN 0393-9375 (Print) 1824-310X (Online).
* Anne O'Connor, "Hugh Falconer, Joseph Prestwich and the Gower caves", "Studies in Speliology," Vol. 14, pp 75 - 79 (2006).

See also

* Tea
* Teak
* Cinchona
* Botany
* Paleoanthropology
* Paleontology
* Geology

External links

* [http://www.falconermuseum.co.uk The Friends of The Falconer Museum]
* [http://www.falconerfriends.blogspot.com Friends Blog]

Persondata
NAME= Falconer, Hugh
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION= Scottish scientist
DATE OF BIRTH= birth date|1808|2|29
PLACE OF BIRTH= Forres, Scotland
DATE OF DEATH= death date|1865|7|31
PLACE OF DEATH= London, England