Roxburgh, William (1751-1815)

Scottish botanist who enlarged the Royal Botanic Gardens in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India. Until he took over the care of these gardens they had served a simply commercial purpose; the East India Company had established them in order to acclimatize plants that they wished to introduce to the Indian subcontinent. Roxburgh brought specimens from all over India and developed a large herbarium.

Roxburgh was born in Craigie in Ayrshire and was educated at Edinburgh University. He found his first employment as a surgeon's mate with the East India Company in 1780. While stationed at Samulcotta, he became a keen botanist and collected a large number of botanical specimens, although many of these were unfortunately lost in a flood of the area in 1787. However, he was fortunate to have previously used an Indian artist to sketch many of them and published a series of illustrations of these and other local plants in a three-volume series Plants of the Coast of Coromandel from 1795-1819. In recognition of his studies, he was elected superintendent of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Calcutta, India in 1793.