Some Biogeographers, Evolutionists and Ecologists:
Chrono-Biographical Sketches

Guppy, Henry Brougham (England 1854-1926)
natural history

Photo courtesy of the Nationaal Herbarium Nederland.

Guppy was an on-board naval surgeon in his earlier years and had an opportunity to study the floras, faunas, and geology (coral basement) of a good number of Pacific islands. He later investigated the floras of islands in the West Indies and Azores as well. Guppy's findings were published over a thirty-year period in a series of well-received books that mixed science with travel narrative; he also contributed a number of technical papers. As a scientist he is most remembered for his studies on the water-based dispersal of seeds, efforts which were based on a wide range of examples, and which wed experiment to hypotheses concerning both mechanisms and (phytogeographic) results.

--born in Falmouth, in December 1854.
--1876-1885: serves as surgeon on the China and Japan station of Her Majesty's Navy
--1877-1880: serves on HMS Hornet
--1878: visits Korea
--1881-1884: serves on HMS Lark, involved in survey work in the West Pacific (especially the Solomons)
--1887: publishes his The Solomon Islands and Their Natives
--1888: studies coral-reef formation in the Keeling Islands
--1896-1900: natural history investigations in the Hawaiian and Fijian Islands
--1903-1904: investigates the littoral flora along the western South America coast
--1903, 1906: publishes his two-volume work Observations of a Naturalist in the Pacific Between 1896 and 1899 [Vol. 1; Vol. 2]
--1907-1911: working on botanical subjects in the West Indies
--1912: publishes his Studies in Seeds and Fruits
--1913-1914: studies the flora of Mount Pico in the Azores
--1917: publishes his Plants, Seeds and Currents in the West Indies and Azores
--1917: receives the Linnean Society's gold medal
--1918: made a fellow of the Royal Society of London
--dies at Martinique, West Indies, on 23 April 1926.

--Journal of Botany, Vol. 64(762) (1926): 161-162.
--Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinsburgh, Vol. 46(4) (1925-1926): 362-364.
--Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Ser. B., Vol. 101(712) (1927): xxviii-xxx.
--Lancet, No. 5361 (1926): 1065.