Biography

British army officer and plant and insect collector. John George Champion was born in Edinburgh, the eldest son of Major John Carey Champion. John George followed in his father's footsteps, being educated at Sandhurst before joining the 95th regiment in 1831. With the rank of captain he was sent on foreign service in 1838, at first being stationed in the Ionian Islands, then in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Having long harboured a passion for entomology and botany, Champion set about making substantial collections of insects and plants while abroad. He presented most of his collections from Greece and Ceylon to the British Museum.

Falling sick in 1839, Champion returned to England. He remained at home for some time, during which he married Frances Carnegie, in 1841. The couple travelled back to Ceylon together and then on to Hong Kong in 1847. The next time Champion came home to England, three years later, he brought with him another collection of dried plants, some of which were new and described by George Bentham in Hooker's Journal of Botany. Bentham also drew on Champion's specimens for his Flora hongkongensis of 1861. His remaining collections were deposited in William Hooker's herbarium, later preserved at Kew. He also left a significant collection of insects.

In 1854 Champion left for the Crimea, where he fought at the Battle of the Alma. Injured at Inkerman in November that year, he was hospitalised at Scutari, where he died shortly afterwards. Before his demise he was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and was made CB (Companion of the Order of the Bath). The plant genus Championia Gard. (Gesneriaceae) honours him, as well as several plant species names and the Latin name for the red longicorn beetle, Erythrus championi.

Sources:
B.D. Jackson, rev. P. E. Kell, 2010, "Champion, John George (1815-1854)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn:

http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/5092, accessed 11 February 2011
E. Talbot Rice and M. Harding, 1989, Butterflies and Bayonets: The soldier as collector
J.R. Troyer, 1979, "The natural history publications of John George Champion (1815-1854), soldier and botanist", Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, 9(2): 125-131.