John Latham | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1740-06-27)27 June 1740 Eltham, Kent, England |
| Died | 4 February 1837(1837-02-04) (aged 96) Winchester,Hampshire, England |
| Known for | A General Synopsis of Birds |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Ornithology |
| Author abbrev. (zoology) | Latham |
John LathamFRS (27 June 1740 – 4 February 1837) was an English physician,naturalist and author. His main works wereA General Synopsis of Birds (1781–1801) andA General History of Birds (1821–1828). He was able to examine specimens of Australian birds that reached England in the final twenty years of the 18th century, and was responsible for providing English names for many of them. He named some of Australia's most famous birds, including theemu,sulphur-crested cockatoo,wedge-tailed eagle,superb lyrebird,Australian magpie,magpie-lark,white-throated needletail andpheasant coucal. Latham has been called the "grandfather" of Australianornithology. He was also the first to describe thehyacinth macaw from South America.
John Latham was born on 27 June 1740 atEltham in northwest Kent. He was the eldest son of John Latham (died 1788),[1] a surgeon, and his mother, who was a descendant of the Sothebys, in Yorkshire.[2]
He was educated atMerchant Taylors' School and then studied anatomy underWilliam Hunter and completed his medical education in London hospitals. In 1763 at the age of 23, he began working as a physician in the village ofDarenth, nearDartford in Kent. In the same year he married Ann Porter. They had four children of whom a son John (1769–1822) and a daughter Ann (1772–1835) survived childhood.[3]
Latham retired from his medical practice aged 56 in 1796 and moved to live near his son atRomsey inHampshire. His wife died in 1798 and Latham remarried the same year to Ann Delamott. His son who had invested in a series of inns became heavily indebted and was declared bankrupt in 1817. Latham lost much of his wealth in supporting his son. In 1819, Latham sold his house in Romsey and moved with his wife to live with his daughter's family inWinchester. His second wife died in 1821 and in the following year his son died by suicide.[3]
Latham died aged 96 in Winchester on 4 February 1837 and was buried inRomsey Abbey.[3]
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A General Synopsis of Birds (1781–1785) was Latham's first ornithological work and contained 106 illustrations by the author. It described many new species that Latham had discovered in various museums and collections. In that work, as withGeorges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, he did not attach importance to the names of the species that he described. Later, Latham realised that only the use of theLinnean binomial system would give him the honour of originating a species' scientific name. Thus he publishedIndex Ornithologicus in 1790, in which he specified a binomial name for all the species he had previously described.
However, it was too late, becauseJohann Friedrich Gmelin had already published his own version of Linnaeus'Systema Naturæ, in which he had given a scientific name to Latham's species. Taking into account the rules of nomenclature, Gmelin's work has priority. Nevertheless, there are around eighty bird species for which Latham's 1790 publication is cited as theauthority. They include theemu, theblack swan, thehyacinth macaw, thesulphur-crested cockatoo, and thenoisy friarbird.[4]
He had a supplement toIndex Ornithologicus, containing additional scientific names, published asSupplementum Indicis Ornithologici in 1801. It is the authority for around seventy species of birds, almost all of which occur only inAustralasia. They include thePacific gull, thebarking owl, thenoisy miner, theAustralian magpie and themagpie-lark.[4] Publication dates are important for establishingpriority in naming species, and there was speculation from the 1990s thatSupplementum Indicis Ornithologici had not been available until 1802, but further research showed that the 1801 publication date is probably correct, and so it is accepted as such by naming authorities.[5]
Working from drawings, Latham appears to have had difficulty in distinguishing the different species, and he described some more than once under different names. In the case of the Australiannoisy miner, he did that four times inSupplementum Indicis Ornithologici: as the chattering bee-eater (Merops garrulus), the black-headed grakle (Gracula melanocephala), the hooded bee-eater (Merops cucullatus), and the white-fronted bee-eater (Merops albifrons).[6][7] This has caused some confusion in the ornithological literature as to the correct scientific name.[8]
Beginning in 1821, when Latham was in his eighties, he published an expanded version of his earlier work in eleven volumes, with the titleA General History of Birds. The ornithologistAlfred Newton later wrote inEncyclopædia Britannica that: "his defects as a compiler, which had been manifest before, rather increased with age, and the consequences were not happy."[9]
Latham maintained a regular correspondence withThomas Pennant,Joseph Banks,Ashton Lever and others. He was elected to theRoyal Society in 1775, and also took part in the creation of theLinnean Society.[10] In 1812, he was elected a foreign member of theRoyal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
