Hugh Falconer (1808-1865)

1. Letter to Baron Clemens von Hügel, 26 May 1837.

2. Eight letters to the Reverend S. W. King, 22 July 1861, 6 January 1862, 14 June 1862, 16 June 1862, 18 June 1862, 23 June 1862, 24 June 1862, and 26 June 1862.

3. Four letters to unnamed recipients: 26 March 1862, 28 March 1862, 27 April 1862, and 26 May 1862.

4. Letter to Lyell, 12 March.

5. Letter to an unnamed recipient, 30 October.

6. Two letters to Mr Flower, stuck together, 29 July and 25 August.

7. Letter to W. Hepworth Dixon, 20 May 1863.

8. Letter to Mr Dawkins, 27 August 1863.

9. Three letters to Falconer from the Reverend S. W. King, 17 June 1862, 20 June 1862, and 4 July 1862.

1837-1863

1 File

Purchased from Glendining, London, December 1931 (acc.67596), February 1932 (acc.67677), and January 1935 (acc.67956); and Heck, Vienna, August 1932 (acc.65895). Transferred from Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, c.1939 (acc.91800). Provenance details not recorded (acc.67430).

Hugh Falconer was a Scottish Paleontologist and Botanist most famous for discovering the Siwalik fossil beds, and suggesting the modern evolutionary theory of punctuated equilibrium. Trained at Aberdeen and Edinburgh, he went on to work as Assistant Surgeon to the East India Company in Bengal before becoming Professor of Botany at Calcutta Medical College. returning to Britain in 1855 because of ill health, Falconer became Vice-President of the Royal Society. He continued to work on comparing fossil species in England and the Continent to those he had found in India for the rest of his life.