William Roxburgh

William Roxburgh (June 29, 1759 - April 10, 1815) was a Scottish physician and botanist.

Roxburgh was born at Underwood in the parish of Craigie , Ayrshire. He studied medicine in Edinburgh and became surgeon's mate on a East India company ship at the age of 17 and completed two voyages to the East in that capacity until the age of 21.

Took up a position in Madras and turned his attention to botany. Made rapid progress and acquired so such a reputation that he was in a short time invited by the government of Bengal, to take charge of the Calcutta Botanical gardens there from Colonel Robert Kyd . He was succeeded by Francis Buchanan-Hamilton.

He became a member of the Asiatic Society, to whose Transactions he contributed, from time to time, many valuable papers, and amongst these one of singular interest on the lacca insect, from which called lac was made.

In 1805, he received the gold medal of the Society for the Promotion of Arts , for a series of highly interesting and valuable communications on the subject of the productions of the East. In 1803 he received a second gold medal for a communication on the growth of trees in India, and on the 31st of May, 1814, was presented with a third, in the presence of a large assembly which he personally attended, by the duke of Norfolk, who was then president of the Society of Arts.

Soon after receiving this last honourable testimony of the high respect in which his talents were held, Mr Roxburgh returned to Edinburgh, where he died.

In 1820 at the Mission Press in Serampore, William Carey posthumously edited and published vol. 1 of Dr. William Roxburgh's Flora Indica; or Descriptions of Indian Plants. In 1824, Carey edited and published vol. 2 of Roxburgh's Flora Indica, including extensive remarks and contributions by Dr. Nathaniel Wallich. Carey and Wallich's continued to work in the field of botany and in 1834, both Carey and Wallich contributed botanical specimens to the Royal Society of Agriculture and Botany's Winter Show in Ghent, Belgium.

The standard botanical author abbreviation Roxb. is applied to species he described.