John Richardson (naturalist) - Definition

Sir John Richardson (1787 - 1865) was a Scottish naval surgeon, naturalist and arctic explorer.

Richardson was born at Dumfries. He travelled with John Franklin between 1819 and 1822 in search of the Northwest Passage. Richardson wrote the sections on geology, botany and icthyology for the official account of the expedition. Franklin and Richardson returned to Canada between 1825 and 1827, again travelling overland to the Arctic Ocean. The natural history discoveries of this expedition were so great that they had to be recorded in two separate works, the Flora Boreali-Americana (1833-40), written by William Jackson Hooker, and the Fauna Boreali-Americana (1829-37), written by Richardson, William Swainson, John Edward Gray and William Kirby.

Richardson travelled with John Rae on an unsuccessful search for Franklin in 1848-49. He retired to the Lake District, and is buried at Grasmere.