John Richardson (naturalist)

Sir John Richardson (1787 to 1865) was a Scottish naval surgeon, naturalist and Arctic explorer, born in Dumfries. He was apprenticed to his uncle, a surgeon in Dumfries, studied medicine at Edinburgh University and became a surgeon in the navy in 1807. He travelled with John Franklin on the Coppermine Expedition of 1819 to 1822 and again in 1825 to 1826, when he surveyed the coast eastward to the mouth of the Coppermine River, and he wrote the Fauna Boreali-Americana accounts of the fishes and animals they found. In 1842 he described the diving apparatus and the treatment of the diver Roderick Cameron after an injury during salvage work on HMS Royal George. He was knighted in 1846 and died at Lancrigg House near Grasmere in 1865.