Irish geographer, diplomat and palaeontologist. Pentland was born in Ballybofey, County Donegal, and attended school in Armagh after being orphaned. He went on to study mineralogy, chemistry and geology at the University of Paris, where he became associated with Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) and developed a passionate interest in fossil bones and zoology. From correspondence it seems he was an assistant and friend of Cuvier from around 1818 and remained in France until 1922, when he went on a tour of Italy. On his return from Italy he was keen to obtain a post at the British Museum, but was not appointed and instead remained in the employ of Cuvier. In 1826 he travelled to the Bolivian Andes with Woodbine Parish, where he made extensive explorations over the next two years, using the latest barometers to measure the heights of several Andean peaks, which he identified as volcanoes, and visiting the antiquities at Cuzco and Lake Titicaca. He also discovered many fossils and brought back various natural history collections.
In 1827 he briefly served as secretary to the consulate-general in Lima, Peru, before returning to Europe where he continued his research on fossils in the Geological Society's museum and began in 1833 to prepare a catalogue of the collections of his late friend, Cuvier, in Paris. He also gave talks at the Royal Geographical Society about his findings in South America and made collections in Caithness, Scotland, before being posted to La Paz in 1936, this time as consul-general. He remained in Bolivia (then the Peru-Bolivia Confederation) for three years, undertaking more explorations and making collections of fossils, plants, animals and birds. He also made a complete survey of Lake Titicaca during this sojourn.
Back in Europe from 1839 he encouraged other explorers and was a keen supporter of the cultivation of Andean plants at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, as well as playing an instrumental role in the introduction of cinchona to the West Indies. He settled in Rome in 1845 and in the 1860s edited three guidebooks for John Murray covering all parts of Italy. He did little more work in vertebrate palaeontology, publishing only one paper, in 1858. He died in London, where he is buried in Brompton Cemetery. The nickel-iron mineral pentlandite, which he discovered in Scotland, is named after him. As well as his association with Cuvier, Pentland was a correspondent of Charles Darwin and the prominent polymath William Buckland (1784-1856), and acted as a guide to the Prince of Wales on two visits to Rome.
Sources:
Anon., 1973, "Mr J.B. Pentland (Obituary)", The Athenaeum, September 6 1873: 309
G.C. Boase, 1895, "Joseph Barclay Pentland", Dictionary of National Biography 44: 350-351
W.A.S. Sarjeant and J.B. Delair, 1979, "An Irishman in Cuvier's laboratory. The letters of Joseph Pentland, 1820-1832", Bulletin of the British Museum of Natural History, Historical Series, 6(7): 245-319.
