Scottish physician and naturalist. John Scouler was the son of a calico printer in Glasgow. While studying medicine at University, he fell under the influence of William Hooker, who was the professor of botany at that time. After Scouler completed his medical studies in 1823, Hooker recommended him to the Hudson's Bay Company as a ship's surgeon and naturalist. On 25 July 1824, Scouler embarked on the William and Ann, with David Douglas of the Royal Horticultural Society, bound for the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest of America. The two naturalists collected plants, minerals, and animals on stopovers in Madeira, Rio de Janeiro, Juan Fernandez, and the Galapagos, and became the first naturalists to explore Oregon. Scouler's account of their travels appeared in the Edinburgh Journal of Science in 1826-1827.
On a second voyage as ship's surgeon, made shortly afterwards, Scouler collected plants in the Cape of Good Hope and at several locations in the Indian Ocean. On his return, he qualified as an MD, started a medical practice in Glasgow, and helped to establish the Glasgow Medical Journal. However, he soon abandoned his medical career to become museum curator and professor of natural history at Anderson's University in 1829. In that same year he was elected to the Linnean Society. In 1833 he was appointed professor of mineralogy of the Royal Society, Dublin. Scouler published more than a score of papers on natural history and became an influential figure in the development of palaeontology in both Scotland and Ireland. In 1850 he was awarded an honorary LLD from Glasgow University. After his retirement to Glasgow in 1853, he resumed his work, on an informal basis, at the Andersonian Museum. A devout Christian, Scouler spent his later years publicly defending the doctrine of final causes against the evolutionary theories of Robert Chambers and Charles Darwin.
Sources:
A. Lasègue, 1845, Musée Botanique do M. Benjamin Delessert: 455
M. Nicolson, 2010, "Scouler, John (1804-1871)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn:
www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24944.
