Robert Wight

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert Wight at the age of 36, lithograph

Robert Wight (born July 6, 1796 in Milton (East Lothian) , Scotland , † May 26, 1872 in Reading , England ) was a Scottish botanist and surgeon . Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Wight ".

Wight spent 30 years of his life in British India and was among other things the director of the Botanic Garden in Madras . His most famous works are the Icones Plantarum Indiae Orientalis (Illustrations of the Plants of East India), which appeared in six volumes in 1856.

biography

Robert Wight was born on July 6, 1796 in Milton, a hamlet near Pencaitland in East Lothian , the twelfth of fourteen children. His father was a member of the Writers to the Signet , an association of Scottish solicitors . He attended the Royal High School in Edinburgh and later the University of Edinburgh , where he successfully completed his medical training in 1816.

After graduating, he began working as a marine surgeon and came to India for the first time in 1819. There he was first assistant surgeon and then surgeon of the 33rd Native Infantry Regiment of the British East India Company . After three years he was transferred to the Botanical Garden in Madras because of his obvious interest in botany. From 1826 to 1828 he put on an extensive botanical collection, which he sent to William Jackson Hooker in Glasgow . In 1828 he was reassigned to a garrison in Nagapattinam as a surgeon .

In 1831 he fell ill and returned to Scotland for three years, bringing with him over two tons of collected plant material, a total of over 100,000 individual plants from 3,000 to 4,000 different species . These were examined by George Arnott Walker Arnott .

Wight published the Spicilegium Nilghiriense in two volumes with 200 colored plates. Between 1840 and 1850 he published the Illustrations of Indian Botany in two volumes and finally, together with Arnott, the Prodromus Florae Peninsulae Indicae . Wight was particularly interested in large illustrations of Indian plants. For his main work, the Icones Plantarum Indiae Orientalis , he had the illustrations done by two Indian artists named Rungiah and Govindoo. Unlike the other British botanists of the time, he also attributed the works to the local artists. He even named a genus of orchids , the Govindooia , after Govindoo. The work was the first attempt to create a flora of India , even if the project was not completed.

Back in India, Wight worked on an experimental cotton farm in Coimbatore . He was a co-founder of the Madras Agri-Horticultural Society . In 1853 he finally returned to Great Britain; there he died in 1872 on his country estate near Reading in England .

Honors

In 1832 he was elected a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina .

In his honor, Nathaniel Wallich named the genus Wightia from the Scrophulariaceae plant family in 1830 . Several species of orchids have also been named after Wight, such as Aerides wightianum , Doritis wightii, and Saccolabium wightianum .

literature

  • HJ Noltie: Indian botanical drawings 1793-1868 from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Edinburgh 1999.
  • HJ Noltie: Robert Wight. and the illustration. of Indian Botany. In .: The Hooker Lecture. The Linnean Special. Issue No. 6. pdf

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Member entry of Robert Wight at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on November 22, 2015.
  2. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Wight, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish surgeon and botanist
DATE OF BIRTH July 6, 1796
PLACE OF BIRTH Milton (East Lothian)
DATE OF DEATH May 26, 1872
Place of death Reading