John Vaughan Thompson


John Vaughan Thompson FLS was a British military surgeon, marine biologist, zoologist, botanist, and published naturalist.

Early years

John Vaughan Thompson was born in British controlled Brooklyn on Long-Island in the Province of New York, North America on 19 November 1779. The family returned to England some time after the American victory in the American War of Independence.
He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, reading anatomy, surgery, midwifery, and botany, before joining the Army in 1799.

Work

He grew up around Berwick-upon-Tweed where he wrote his first book A Catalogue of Plants Growing in the Vicinity of Berwick Upon Tweed which was published in 1807. In each of his military postings such as the West Indies and Guiana , Mauritius and Madagascar , he continued his natural history studies with two of his papers being read before the Linnean Society on London in 1807, the first On the genus Kaempferia in April 1807 and the second An Account of Some New Species of Piper in June; both of these were submitted on his behalf by Francis Mackenzie, 1st Baron Seaforth F.R.S and L.S.
In 1816, he was posted to County Cork in Ireland as Surgeon to the forces and later as Deputy Inspector General of Hospitals. While in Cork he published several works including which is listed as having been taken by Charles Darwin on his famous Second voyage of HMS Beagle

Selected works

A Catalogue of Plants Growing in the Vicinity of Berwick Upon Tweed, 1807An Account of Some New Species of Piper, with a Few Cursory Observations on the Genus, 1807
  • , 1812A Catalogue of The Exotic Plants cultivated in the Mauritius..., Nov. 1816
  • , 1827
  • , 1828Pentacrinus Europaeus and the Star Fish, 1829Contributions Towards the Natural History of the Dodo, a Bird which Appears to Have Become Extinct Towards the End of the Seventeenth Century Or Beginning of the Eighteenth Century, 1829
  • , 1830
  • * Memoir V of Zoological Researches:
  • , 1832
  • . Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 3: 356-358, 1835Memoir on the Star-fish of the Genus Comatula, Demonstrative of the Pentacrinus Europaeus Being the Young of Our Indigenous Species, 1836Statement of the Case of Jas. Mitchell, Esq., Late Surgeon, on the Civil Establishment of New South Wales, 1838Figures and Descriptions of Canadian Organic Remains, Decade IV Page 67 "Genus Comatula", 1859

Death

In 1835 he was transferred to Sydney, Australia, as Deputy Inspector General of Hospitals in New South Wales, a position he held till he retired in 1844. He died at his home in Sydney on 21 January 1847.