Hugh Edwin Strickland | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1811-03-02)2 March 1811 Reighton,East Riding of Yorkshire, England |
| Died | 14 September 1853(1853-09-14) (aged 42) |
| Citizenship | Britain |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Geology Ornithology Natural history Systematics |
Hugh Edwin Strickland (2 March 1811 – 14 September 1853) was an Englishgeologist,ornithologist,naturalist andsystematist. Through the British Association, he proposed a series of rules for the nomenclature of organisms in zoology, known as the Strickland Code, that was a precursor of later codes for nomenclature.
Strickland was born atReighton, in theEast Riding of Yorkshire. He was the second son ofHenry Eustatius Strickland ofApperley,Gloucestershire, by his wife Mary, daughter ofEdmund Cartwright, inventor of thepower loom, and grandson of Sir George Strickland, bart., ofBoynton. In 1827 he was sent as a pupil toThomas Arnold (1795–1842), a family friend.[1]
As a boy he acquired a taste for natural history which dominated his life. He received his early education from private tutors and in 1829 enteredOriel College, Oxford. He attended the anatomical lectures ofJohn Kidd and the geological lectures ofWilliam Buckland and he became interested both inzoology andgeology. He graduated B.A. in 1831, and proceeded to M.A. in the following year.[2] He married Catherine Dorcas Maule Jardine, the daughter ofSir William Jardine, in 1845. She drew many of the illustrations forIllustrations to Ornithology (1825–1843), using her initials, CDMS (her sister Helen was also an illustrator).[3]
Returning to his home at Cracombe House, nearTewkesbury, he began to study the geology of theVale of Evesham, communicating papers to theGeological Society of London (1833–1834). He also gave much attention to ornithology. Becoming acquainted withRoderick Murchison he was introduced toWilliam Hamilton (1805–1867) and accompanied him in 1835 on a journey throughAsia Minor, the ThracianBosporus and the island ofZante. Hamilton afterwards published the results of this journey and of his subsequent excursion toArmenia inResearches in Asia Minor, Pontus and Armenia (1842).[2]
After his return in 1836 Strickland brought before the Geological Society several papers on the geology of the districts he had visited in southern Europe and Asia. He also described in detail the "drift deposits in the counties of Worcester and Warwick, drawing particular attention to the fluviatile deposits of Cropthorne in which remains ofhippopotamus, &c., were found". With Murchison he read before the Geological Society an important paperOn the Upper Formations of the New Red Sandstone System inGloucestershire, Worcestershire andWarwickshire (Trans. Geol. Soc., 1840). In other papers he described theBristol Bone-bed nearTewkesbury and theLudlow Bone-bed ofWoolhope. He was author likewise ofornithological memoirs communicated to theZoological Society, the Annals and Magazine of Natural History and theBritish Association.
He drew up the report, in 1842, of a committee appointed by the British Association to consider the rules ofzoological nomenclature.[4][5] This report is the earliest formal codification of theprinciple of priority, which represents the fundamental guiding precept that preserves the stability of zoological nomenclature. It became known as the "Strickland Code". The code took thetwelfth edition ofCarl Linnaeus'sSystema Naturae, published in 1766, as the starting point.[6]
He was one of the founders of theRay Society, suggested in 1843 and established in 1844, the object being the publication of works on natural history which could not be undertaken by scientific societies or by publishers. For this society Strickland corrected, enlarged and edited the manuscript ofAgassiz for theBibliographia Zoologiae et Geologiae (1848). In 1845 he edited with J. Buckman a second and enlarged edition of Murchison'sOutline of the Geology of the neighbourhood ofCheltenham. In 1846 he settled atOxford, and two years later he issued in conjunction withAlexander Gordon Melville a work onTheDodo and its kindred (1848).[2][7]
In 1850 he was appointed deputy reader in geology at Oxford during the illness of Buckland, and in 1852 he was elected Fellow of theRoyal Society. In the following year, after attending the meeting of the British Association atHull, he went to examine the geological strata visible in cuttings on theManchester Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway nearRetford. There he was knocked down and killed by a train;[2] on a double track he stepped out of the way of a goods train and was hit by an express coming in the opposite direction.[8] He was buried atDeerhurst church near Tewkesbury, where a memorial window was erected.[2]
HisOrnithological Synonyms was published in 1855. His collection of 6,000 birds went toCambridge in 1867. While travelling in 1835 he discovered theolive-tree warbler on the island ofZante, and thecinereous bunting in the vicinity ofİzmir in westernTurkey.
His name was honoured in the name of a bird endemic to N. Borneo,Copsychus stricklandii Motley & Dillwyn (1855)[9] as well as the brachiopod genusStricklandia.[10][11]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Strickland, Hugh Edwin".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 25 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 1023.