Robert Brown
1773–1858
Scottish botanist. Naturalist to the expedition surveying the coast of Australia, 1801–5; published descriptions of the plants he collected. Librarian to the Linnean Society of London, 1805–22; to Sir Joseph Banks, 1810–20. Continued as curator of Banks’s collections after his death in 1820 and negotiated their transfer to the British Museum in 1827. Keeper of the botanical collections, British Museum, 1827–58. Discoverer of ‘Brownian motion’. FRS 1811.
Sources
DSB
ODNB.
Bibliography
DSB: Dictionary of scientific biography. Edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie and Frederic L. Holmes. 18 vols. including index and supplements. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1970–90.
ODNB: Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000. (Revised edition.) Edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 60 vols. and index. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004.
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