Philip Burnard Ayres

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Philip Burnard Ayres (* 12. December 1813 in Thame , Oxfordshire , † 30th April 1863 in Port Louis , Mauritius ) was a British physician, botanist and plant collector , who primarily for his research in Madagascar , the Seychelles and Mascarene known has become. At the same time he is considered to be the discoverer of the first subfossil dodo bones .

Live and act

As a young man, Ayres was collecting plants in Great Britain and France. From October 1833 he studied medicine at University College London , where he acquired the pharmacist's license (LSA) in 1836 and was accepted into the circle of doctors of the Royal College (MRCS) on April 25, 1836. On December 9, 1841 he became a doctor of medicine and practiced in Thame for almost 10 years. He then worked as a lecturer in chemistry at Charing Cross Hospital. In 1851 he worked as a doctor in the Islington Medicines Department . He was also the editor of the Pharmaceutical Times journal . In 1847 he patented a process in which liquid manure is converted into fertilizer. 1856 gave him Queen Victoria the supervision of the Governor Robert Townsend Farquhar to quarantine island declared Flat Iceland , Mauritius. In his spare time, Ayres worked as a plant collector. He traveled to Madagascar, the Seychelles and the Mascarene Islands and collected extensive endemic plant material from these regions, which is now in the herbaria of the Natural History Museum , London, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh , the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew , the Missouri Botanical Garden and the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle , Paris. Ayres cataloged and drew the plants in the wild, which was common among 19th-century botanists. He originally planned to write a book about the flora of Mauritius, but before that came about he died of relapsing fever in 1863 . His wife Harriet collected his written records and bequeathed them to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

His eldest son Philip Burnard Chenery Ayres (1840–1899) was a well-known doctor in Hong Kong .

Publications (selection)

  • Micro-Chemical Researches on the Digestion of Starch and Amylaceous Foods. In: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Volume 7, 1855, pp. 225-232, DOI: 10.1098 / rspl.1854.0058 .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ JP Hume, AS Cheke, A. McOran-Campbell: How Owen 'stole' the Dodo: Academic rivalry and disputed rights to a newly-discovered subfossil deposit in nineteenth century Mauritius . In: Historical Biology . tape 21 , 2009, p. 33 , doi : 10.1080 / 08912960903101868 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Ayres, Philip Burnard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British physician, botanist and plant collector
DATE OF BIRTH December 12, 1813
PLACE OF BIRTH Thame , Oxfordshire
DATE OF DEATH April 30, 1863
Place of death Port Louis , Mauritius