Biography

Scottish botanist who served as curator at the herbarium of the Singapore Botanic Gardens. Sinclair developed expert knowledge of the Annonaceae and Myristicaceae families and collected many plants in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Sinclair was born at The Bu of Hoy in the Orkney Islands. His birth date was officially recorded as 6 December, 1913, though he had actually been born on 29 November, but storms caused a delay in the registration of the birth at Kirkwall. He grew up on his father's large farm and did well at school, gaining a place at Edinburgh University. As a teenager he had begun to build up a personal herbarium, inspired by the family friend, Col. Henry Halcro Johnston, and at Edinburgh he studied botany, graduating in 1936. Training thereafter as a teacher Sinclair was employed at schools in Orkney, where he continued in his spare time with studies of marine algae, making several phycological discoveries. He served as a radar operator for the R.A.F. from 1941-1945, being posted to India from 1942 until the end of the war, where he took the opportunity to make collections in parts of the Himalayas, around Bombay (Mumbai), Chittagong and in other areas. His most significant collections during this period were at Cox's Bazar (now in Bangladesh), where he stayed two years. He revisited the port town in 1949.

After his demobilisation Sinclair joined the Edinburgh Royal Botanic Garden as Government Botanist. In charge of the herbarium, he soon acquired the collections made by his friend and late mentor Henry Johnston, which were transferred from Stromness Museum to the Edinburgh herbarium. He left Edinburgh in 1948 to take up the post of herbarium curator at the Singapore Botanic Gardens, his experience in India obviously having whetted his appetite for such climes. He remained in this position (later titled Keeper) until his official retirement in 1963 under the Malayanisation scheme, but continued his work there for another four years.

In Singapore Sinclair was charged with revising the Annonaceae for the Flora of Malaya. He also published papers on the family in neighbouring countries (India, Burma, Thailand, Borneo and Papua) and a monographic revision of the Malayan Myristicaceae in 1958. Around this time the focus of the Singapore Gardens' work shifted to involvement with the Flora Malesiana (led by the Rijksherbarium, Leiden) and Sinclair began to publish works with this in mind. He maintained his interest in marine plants and always collected mosses on expeditions, too. Sinclair attempted to revive E.J.H. Corner's 'Corps of Collecting Monkeys' in 1949, but, choosing a sickly monkey to collect material from trees, was not successful.

Sinclair frequently collected plants in Singapore and the southern part of Malaysia (Johore state) between 1949 and 1967. He visited all the states of the country then known as Malaya, apart from Kedah and Perlis on the northern border. His major expeditions were to Sarawak (1949, where he also organised the neglected Sarawak Museum Herbarium), Penang (1950 and 1951), Trengganu (1953, 1954 and 1955), North Borneo (1955), Luzon, Philippines (1958), West Java (1959), and Sarawak and Brunei (1960). He regretted not being able to visit New Guinea in 1961, despite financial assistance offered by the Royal Society, due to political hostilities at that time. Ever dedicated to his work, he spent much time visiting herbaria on the way back to holidays in Britain, where he would then spend long periods at Kew, Edinburgh and Cambridge herbaria.

An overweight figure, Sinclair suffered a heart attack in 1964 and after returning in 1967 to the Scottish island where he grew up, he found he had terminal cancer. He spent his final months growing mosses in the family house, where his sister and brother-in-law still farmed. His last completed manuscript, "The Genus Myristica in Malesia and outside Malesia", was posthumously published in 1968.

Sources:
H.N. Burkill, 1968, The Gardens' Bulletin: Singapore, 23: xx-xxiii
M.J. van Steenis Kruseman, "Cyclopedia of Collectors", Flora Malesiana, online edn:
http://www.nationaalherbarium.nl/FMCollectors/S/SinclairJ.htm, accessed 11 November 2010.