Hans Sloane

Sir Hans Sloane was an Anglo-Irish physician, naturalist and collector, born in Killyleagh in Ulster in 1660. He was elected to the Royal Society at twenty-four, travelled to Jamaica in 1687 and published his findings there years later. Settled in London, he built a fashionable practice among the aristocracy, served three sovereigns and in 1716 became the first medical practitioner given a hereditary baronetcy. He was president of the Royal College of Physicians from 1719 to 1735 and succeeded Isaac Newton as president of the Royal Society in 1727. His collection of about seventy-one thousand items, bequeathed to the nation, became the foundation of the British Museum. He also held investments in companies that traded in enslaved people. He died in 1753.