Edward Forbes

In June 1831, Forbes moved to London to study drawing but was not admitted by the Royal Academy. However, having given up on art as a profession, he trained privately and moved back to Douglas. In later years, Forbes used his artistic abilities to create humorous drawings for his publications.

In November 1832, Forbes matriculated as a medical student in the

Travels

In 1833, Forbes travelled to Norway to study its botanical resources. His findings were published in Loudon's Magazine of Natural History for 1835–1836. The British Association funded his studies based on dredging in the Irish Sea for biological specimens.^[6] In 1835, he travelled in France, Switzerland and Germany to study their natural histories.^[5]

In 1836, Forbes abandoned his medical studies and moved to Paris, where he attended the lectures at the

In 1838, Forbes published his first volume, Malacologia Monensis, a synopsis of the mollusk species native to the Isle of Man. During the summer of 1838 he visited the Duchy of Styria (now part of Austria and Slovenia) and Carniola in Slovenia to gather botanical specimens.^[5]

Scholarly years

Marine biology

In 1838, Forbes presented a paper to the

In 1843, Forbes presented a Report on the Mollusca and Radiata of the Aegean Sea,^[7] to the British Association. In the report, he discussed the influence of climate and of the nature and depth of the sea bottom upon marine life. He divided the Aegean region into eight biological zones. In his azoic hypothesis, Forbes stated that the sea regions below 300 fathom were entirely devoid of life.^[8] This hypothesis was disproved 25 years later.^[8][5]

In 1847, Forbes published Travels in Lycia with Lieut. T. A. B. Spratt. In 1848, he published his monograph on jellyfish, the British Naked-eyed Medusae (Ray Society).

In 1852, Forbes published the fourth and concluding volume of Forbes and

In 1842, financial pressures forced Forbes to take the curatorship of the museum of the Geological Society of London. In 1843, he also became a professor botany at King's College London.

In November 1844, Forbes resigned the curatorship and became

• The West and Southwest Irish group, related to flora from
  Northern Spain
• The Southeast Irish and Southwest English group, related to flora of the Channel Islands and nearby coastal France
• The Southeast English group, characterized by species from the Northern French coast
• The mountain summits group, related to Scandinavian flora
• A general or Germanic flora group

Forbes theorized that the majority of British terrestrial animals and flowering plants migrated there over land bridges before, during and after the ice age.^[10] His theory was later discredited. (see C Reid's Origin of the British Flora, 1899).

In 1851 Forbes was professor of natural history to the Royal School of Mines.

T. H. Huxley

Forbes served as an important mentor to the young biologist Thomas Henry Huxley. During Huxley's 1846 to 1850 voyage on HMS Rattlesnake to Northern Australia, Huxley relayed news of his discoveries back to Forbes in the United Kingdom, who then published them.

Forbes provided Huxley with introductions to influential people, wrote a favorable review of Huxley's work, and helped his admission to the Royal Society (FRS) at age 26.^[11]

Illustrations

Forbes's scientific illustrations have been said to be anthropomorphic, often just hiding a human form even when depicting an invertebrate.^[4]

• 
  Frontispiece to Forbes's Natural History of the European Seas (Forbes's initials are in the lower right of this cartoon depicting deep sea dredging for marine fauna)
• 
  Indian cosmogony and Fauna Sivalensis, cartoon by Forbes in the notebook of Hugh Falconer
• 
  Drawing by Forbes of geologist Gideon Mantell engaged in battle with flying dinosaurs on the English coastline, c. 1830s

Final years

In 1853 Forbes became president of the Geological Society of London. In 1854, he was appointed professor of natural history at the University of Edinburgh, a long sought goal. During his later years, Forbes found more time in between lecturing and writing to order his stores of biological information.

In the summer of 1854, Forbes lectured at Edinburgh and in September served as president of the geological section at the Liverpool meeting of the British Science Association. He served briefly as Professor of Natural History in succession to Prof Robert Jameson.^[12]

In November 1854, soon after the start of winter classes at Edinburgh, Forbes became ill. He died at

• On the Tertiary Fluviomarine Formation of the Isle of Wight (Geol. Survey), edited by RAC Godwin-Austen (1856)
• The Natural History of the European Seas, edited and continued by RAC Godwin-Austen (1859).^[9]

Forbes's widow provided papers to George Wilson to write up the memoirs of Forbes. Wilson however died in 1859 and his sister then passed on the papers to Archibald Geikie who had met Forbes only twice. Forbes's widow married Major Yelverton in 1858 and forbade Geikie to work on the memoirs, seeking back all the papers. Forbes's brother however wished that Geikie finish the book as did the publisher Alexander Macmillan. In 1860, it was found that Yelverton had earlier married Maria Teresa Longworth and the separation had not been made with a witness. Yelverton was accused of bigamy and Teresa Longworth wrote about her plight in a book Martyrs to Circumstance. Mrs Forbes had two sons by Yelverton and with the case being in the limelight, she had no time to apply pressure on Geikie. Geikie however had to exercise considerable diplomacy while writing the biography as Forbes had claimed that he had been sufficiently remunerated by the School of Mines.^[14]

See also

• European and American voyages of scientific exploration
• "The New Museum Idea"

Notes

References

• Anderson, T.R.; Rice, T. (December 2006). "Deserts on the sea floor: Edward Forbes and his azoic hypothesis for a lifeless deep ocean". Endeavour. 30 (4): 131–137.
  PMID 17097733
  .
• Forbes, E. (1844). "Report on the Mollusca and Radiata of the Aegean Sea, and on their distribution, considered as bearing on geology". Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science for 1843. pp. 129–193 [1].

Attribution

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Forbes, Edward". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 637, 638. Endnotes:
  • Literary Gazette (25 November 1854);
  • Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (New Ser.), (1855);
  • Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. (May 1855);
  • G. Wilson and A. Geikie, Memoir of Edward Forbes (1861), in which, pp. 575–583, is given a list of Forbes's writings.
  • Literary Papers, edited by Lovell Reeve (1855).

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Edward Forbes.

• Works by or about Edward Forbes at Wikisource
• Memoir of Edward Forbes, by George Wilson and Archibald Geikie (MacMillan and Edmonston co., 1861)
• Edward Forbes obituary, by Thomas Huxley (Journal of Science and Literary Gazette, 1854); Clarke College
• Manx Worthies: Professor Edward Forbes (and part 2), by A.W. Moore (The Manx Note Book, Vol. iii, 1887)
• Chrono-biographical sketch; Western Kentucky University