Thomas Hutchins (naturalist)
Thomas Hutchins
Life
Hutchins was employed as
He was visited 1768–1769 by astronomer William Wales, who had been sent by the Royal Society to observe the 1769 transit of Venus, and was left equipment and instructions for recording meteorological data.
Encouraged by his acting chief Andrew Graham 1771–1772, he kept notes on wildlife, including descriptions of species not previously recorded.
At the behest of the Royal Society, he made useful observations on magnetic declination at Albany 1775–1776.
He performed preliminary experiments on the congelation (
He served the Hudson's Bay Company for the rest of his life in London as corresponding secretary.
It is probable that much of the nature notes for which he was also highly praised was actually the work of Andrew Graham, either generously given or plagiarised, an action not considered so reprehensible in those days.
In 1784 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were John McGowan, John Robison and Very Rev John Walker.[1]
He died on 7 July 1790.
Hutchins' goose (Branta hutchinsii) was named for him
References
- ISBN 0-902-198-84-X. Archived from the original(PDF) on 24 January 2013. Retrieved 17 November 2016.
- Eighteenth Century Naturalists of Hudson Bay by Stuart Houston, Tim Ball, Mary Houston (McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal, Canada)
- Cavendish by Christa Jungnickel, Russell McCormmach (The American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1996)
External links
- Williams, Glyndwr (1979–2016). "Hutchins, Thomas". Dictionary of Canadian Biography (online ed.). University of Toronto Press.