Henry Ogg Forbes was a Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 explorer, ornithologist, and botanist. Educated at Aberdeen Grammar School

Aberdeen Grammar School

Aberdeen Grammar School, known to students as The Grammar is a state secondary school in the City of Aberdeen, Scotland. It is one of twelve secondary schools run by the Aberdeen City Council educational department...

, the University of Aberdeen

University of Aberdeen

The University of Aberdeen, an ancient university founded in 1495, in Aberdeen, Scotland, is a British university. It is the third oldest university in Scotland, and the fifth oldest in the United Kingdom and wider English-speaking world...

 and the University of Edinburgh

University of Edinburgh

The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...

, he was primarily active in the Moluccas and New Guinea

New Guinea

New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...

, he served as director of the Canterbury Museum in New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 between 1890–1893, and eventually moved to Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, where he served as a consulting director of museums there until his death. He is mentioned in A Short History of Nearly Everything

A Short History of Nearly Everything

A Short History of Nearly Everything is a popular science book by American author Bill Bryson that explains some areas of science, using a style of language which aims to be more accessible to the general public than many other books dedicated to the subject...

by Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson

William McGuire "Bill" Bryson, OBE, is a best-selling American author of humorous books on travel, as well as books on the English language and on science. Born an American, he was a resident of Britain for most of his adult life before moving back to the US in 1995...

.

The zoologist William Alexander Forbes

William Alexander Forbes

William Alexander Forbes was an English zoologist.Forbes studied natural sciences at St John's College, Cambridge. In 1879 he was appointed prosector to the Zoological Society of London on the death of the previous incumbent, Alfred Henry Garrod, who was Forbes's friend and whose literary executor...

, who died on an expedition to West Africa in 1883, was H. O. Forbes's friend and fellow-classmate at the University of Edinburgh; the book A Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago is dedicated to him.

External links

• Henry Ogg Forbes at Bright Sparcs