Thomas Croxen Archer

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 Literature, letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". ...

FSA FRSSA (28 November 1817 – 19 February 1885) was a British botanist, and from 1860 was Director of the Industrial Museum of Scotland, renamed the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art in 1864, a post he held until his death in 1885 (the museum has since been merged into the

National Museum of Scotland The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, Scotland, is a museum of Scottish history and culture. It was formed in 2006 with the merger of the new Museum of Scotland, with collections relating to Scottish antiquities, culture and history, ...

Early life and education

Archer was born in 1817 in

Hardingstone Hardingstone is a village in Northamptonshire, England. It is on the southern edge of Northampton, and now forms a suburb of the town. It is about from the town centre. The Newport Pagnell road (the B526, formerly part of the A50) separates ...

Northamptonshire Northamptonshire ( ; abbreviated Northants.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It is bordered by Leicestershire, Rutland and Lincolnshire to the north, Cambridgeshire to the east, Bedfordshi ...

Career

From 1842 to 1856, he worked as a customs officer in

Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...

. He studied botany at the medical school in Liverpool and at Queen's College there, and went on to be Professor of Botany at the college. Archer was Superintendent and then Director of the Industrial Museum of Scotland, from 1860 to 1864. He then became the first Director of the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art, a post he held from 1864 until his death in 1885. The museum later became the Royal Scottish Museum, and in 2006 was merged with the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland to form the

. He was a member of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts from 1861 (and its President in 1874), the Botanical Society of Edinburgh (President for 1861–62), and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He was elected as a member of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...

in 1876.

Personal life

On 27 December 1841, he married Mary Eleanor Salmon (1818-1879) at St. Paul's, Deptford, London. Their daughter Emma Archer married Captain Bruno Bruno (sic).Archer grave, Grange Cemetery, Edinburgh In 1861, he was living at 46 Gilmore Place, with his wife Mary Eleanor Archer, seven children and two other people. In 1881, he was living at 5 West Newington Terrace, with two of his children and five other people. He died on 19 February 1885 and is buried in

Grange Cemetery The Grange (originally St Giles' Grange) is an affluent suburb of Edinburgh, just south of the city centre, with Morningside and Greenhill to the west, Newington to the east, The Meadows park and Marchmont to the north, and Blackford Hi ...

in south Edinburgh. The grave lies on the south-east corner of the main north-west section facing the main central path.

References

1817 births 1885 deaths 19th-century British botanists People from Hardingstone Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellows_of_the_Society_of_Antiquaries_of_London {{UK-scientist-stub