British scientist, explorer and author (1842–1895)
This article is about Robert Brown (Botanist R.Br.ter). For Robert Brown (Botanist R.Br.) and the discoverer of Brownian motion, see Robert Brown (botanist, born 1773).
Robert Brown (23 March 1842[1]: 3 – 26 October 1895) was a British scientist, explorer, and author.
He took the habit of referring to his home town, Campster (Campsterianus), to distinguish himself from his famous contemporary of the same name: Robert Brown of Montrose.
He visited Spitzbergen, Greenland, and the western shore of Baffin Bay while still an undergraduate, and subsequently carried on scientific investigations among the islands of the Pacific and on the Venezuelan, Alaskan, and Bering shores, leading an expedition to map the interior of Vancouver Island and writing much on the fauna and flora of those countries.[2]
With Edward Whymper, brother of Frederick, he attempted to penetrate the inland ice of Greenland in 1867, and made many discoveries concerning its nature which were later confirmed by Robert Peary. He traveled in the Barbary States of North Africa, and became the foremost British authority on Morocco almost by accident, having gone there for a holiday but having found himself unable to enjoy idleness.
Lecturing and writing
Before he was 30 years old Brown had written over 30 academic papers and an advanced textbook on botany, in addition to more popularising works. He wrote up his Vancouver Island travels and was awarded a doctorate based on this by the University of Rostock in 1869.
Brown moved to London in 1876 and spent the rest of his life writing, earning his living as a journalist. In addition to botany, he also wrote prolifically on zoology, geology, and geography, for both learned and popular audiences. One example of this ability to write for generalists and specialists is the extensive commentary he contributed to an 1896 reprint of the 1807 slave narrative of John R. Jewitt, in which Brown reflects on the changes in the lives of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast from the time of the first European explorers in the late eighteenth century, to Maquinna's chiefdom and Jewitt's captivity, to his own explorations in 1863, when intertribal warfare was still rife, to the situation in the mid-1890s, by when many of the nations were on the brink of extinction.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Brown's 1886 book Spunyarn and Spindrift, A sailor boy’s log of a voyage out and home in a China tea-clipper contains the earliest known usage in print of Gadget.[8]
Brown had been a strong, confident, fun-loving young man, but worked too hard, and was both incapable of relaxing and at the same time exhausted by London life. He grew jaded that his best work went unrecognised,[9] and died 26 October 1895, only 53 years old, working to the night of his death as a writer.[3]: 67 He was buried at West Norwood Cemetery.
Publications
In addition to many scientific papers, articles, and reviews in various languages, his publications included:
The adventures of John Jewitt : only survivor of the crew of the ship Boston during a captivity of nearly three years among the Indians of Nootka Sound in Vancouver Island (1896) reprint with notes and 30-page introduction by Robert Brown at Internet Archive.
^The adventures of John Jewitt : only survivor of the crew of the ship Boston during a captivity of nearly three years among the Indians of Nootka Sound in Vancouver Island (1896) reprint with commentary by Robert Brown, and "in memory" section about him, at Internet Archive
A four-page description of his life and work, by an "A.J.W.", as preface to The adventures of John Jewitt, a memoir to which Brown had contributed extensive commentary. Also includes a photographic portrait of him in 1870. Full text at Internet Archive.