John Richardson (naturalist)

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birth_date = November 5, 1787
birth_place = Dumfries
death_date = June 5, 1865
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nationality = Scottish
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field = surgeon naturalist
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Sir John Richardson (November 5, 1787 – June 5, 1865) was a Scottish naval surgeon, naturalist and arctic explorer.cite web |url=http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=4670 |title=Biography at the "Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online" |Publisher=Library and Archive Canada |accessdate=2008-06-19]

Richardson was born at Dumfries. He studied medicine at Edinburgh, and became a surgeon in the navy in 1807. He traveled with John Franklin between 1819 and 1822 in search of the Northwest Passage. Richardson wrote the sections on geology, botany and icthyology for the official account of the expedition.

Franklin and Richardson returned to Canada between 1825 and 1827, again traveling overland to the Arctic Ocean. The natural history discoveries of this expedition were so great that they had to be recorded in two separate works, the "Flora Boreali-Americana" (1833-40), written by William Jackson Hooker, and the "Fauna Boreali-Americana" (1829-37), written by Richardson, William John Swainson, John Edward Gray and William Kirby.

At the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in 1842, Richardson described the diving apparatus and treatment of diver Roderick Cameron following an injury that occurred on the 14th of October 1841 during the salvage operations on the HMS "Royal George". [cite journal |author=Richardson J |title=Abstract of the case of a diver employed on the wreck of the Royal George, who was injured by the bursting of the air-pipe of the diving apparatus. 1842 |journal=Undersea Biomed Res |volume=18 |issue=1 |pages=63–4 |year=1991 |month=January |pmid=2021022 |doi= |url=http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/2729 |accessdate=2008-06-19]

Richardson was knighted in 1846. He traveled with John Rae on an unsuccessful search for Franklin in 1848-49, describing it in "An Arctic Searching Expedition" (1851). He retired to the Lake District in 1855, and is buried at Grasmere.

He also wrote accounts dealing with the natural history, and especially the ichthyology, of several other Arctic voyages, and was the author of "Icones Piscium" (1843), "Catalogue of Apodal Fish in the British Museum" (1856), the second edition of "Yarrell's history of British Fishes" (1860), and "The Polar Regions" (1861).

References

* [http://www.aina.ucalgary.ca/scripts/minisa.dll/144/proe/proarc/se+arctic,+v.+36,+no.++4,+Dec.+1983,*?COMMANDSEARCH " Houston, C.S. "John Richardson (1787-1865)"]