Biography

Scottish medic and botanist who spent more than three decades working in India. Robert Wight was born in Milton, East Lothian. His father was a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh. In 1816 Wight qualified in medicine at Edinburgh University, after which he became a ship's surgeon and sailed on several voyages, including to the United States. He then applied for a position with the East India Company and in 1819 sailed as assistant surgeon for Asia, marking the beginning of his long career in India.

Wight was soon promoted to full surgeon with the 33rd Regiment of the E.I.C. Native Infantry. His interest in botany developed, however, and within three years he was put in charge of the botanic gardens at Madras and was later appointed naturalist to the E.I.C. This appointment gave Wight the opportunity to make extensive collections of plants in the south of India, many of which he sent to Sir William Hooker in Glasgow in 1826, with duplicates being received by other European botanists. He also employed local artists to make illustrations of the indigenous flora, published in six volumes as Icones Plantarum Indiae Orientalis (1838-1853). Wight's post in Madras did not last, though, and he was reassigned in 1828 as garrison surgeon at Nagapattinam. He nevertheless continued his private studies of Indian botany there and in the Tanjore (Thanjavur) region.

In 1831 Wight was promoted to full surgeon and in the same year took a leave of absence due to sickness (he had contracted a tropical fever). He returned to Scotland with some 100,000 plant specimens, weighing no less than two tons. While Wight worked on his richly illustrated Specilegium Nilghiriense and Illustrations of Indian Botany, Dr. George Walker-Arnott studied Wight's herbarium specimens. Together with Walker-Arnott he produced Prodromus Florae Peninsulae Indicae.

After three years Wight was back in India, where he continued to be active in botanical matters, publishing numerous articles in the Madras Journal of Literature and Science. He also helped to edit E.J. Waring's Pharmacopoiea of India and in 1836 took charge of the collections at the Peradeniya botanical gardens in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). In the same year he was transferred to the Revenue Department, being charged with looking into the state of agriculture in southern India. He oversaw the founding of the botanic garden of the Agri-Horticultural Society at Madras in 1838 and from 1842-1850 served as superintendent of experimental cotton plantations at Coimbatore.

Wight returned to England in 1853, donating his entire Indian herbarium to Kew. He had collected more than 4,000 different species and described in excess of 3,000 new species and many genera. In recognition of his work, Wight was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society and a member of the Imperial Academy (1832). He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1855. The genus Wightia Wall. commemorates him. Robert Wight is sometimes called Richard Wight in publications prior to 1833, presumably by mistake.

Sources:
Anon., 1872, Gardeners' Chronicle, 50(22): 731-732
R.K. Basak, 1981, "Robert Wight and His Botanical Studies in India", Taxon, 30(4): 784-793
H.J. Noltie, 2007, The Botany of Robert Wight
H.J. Noltie, 2007, The Life and Work of Robert Wight.