Lt Col Edward Madden

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...

(1805-1856) was an Irish-born botanist specialising in the mountain plants of the Himalayan passes.

Life

He was born in Ireland in 1805. Trained as a soldier he joined the army attached to the artillery in the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...

around 1820. He travelled extensively in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

in the 1820s and 1830s and believed he saw Biblical associations to the local flora. He did later tours in the company of Dr Hugh Falconer, basing themselves at Saharunpore. They also met and befriended the brothers Henry and Richard Strachey. He retired to

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in 1849, living at 26 Regent Terrace, an elegant Georgian townhouse on Calton Hill. In 1853 he was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

, his proposer being John Fleming. He was also President of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh for 1855–56. He died in Edinburgh in 1856.

Family

He is known to have married as "Mrs Madden" continues to live at 26 Royal Terrace after his death.Edinburgh Post Office Directory 1858-59

Publications

*''On the Coniferae of the Himalaya'' *''On the Plants of the Turaee and Outer Mountains of the Kumaoon''

References

1805 births 1856 deaths 19th-century Irish botanists Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh {{UK-botanist-stub