Ramsay Heatley Traquair
FRSE
Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and Literature, letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". ...
FRS (30 July 1840 – 22 November 1912) was a Scottish naturalist and
palaeontologist
Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure geolo ...
who became a leading expert on
fossil fish
Fish began evolving about 530 million years ago during the Cambrian explosion. It was during this time that the early chordates developed the skull and the vertebral column, leading to the first craniates and vertebrates. The first fish line ...
.
Traquair trained as a medical doctor, but his thesis was on aspects of fish anatomy. He held posts as Professor of Natural History and Professor of Zoology in England and Ireland, before returning to his native Edinburgh to take up a post at the
Museum of Science and Art. He spent the remainder of his career at the Museum building up a renowned collection of fossil fish over a period of more than three decades.
He published extensively on
palaeoichthyology
__NOTOC__
Prehistoric fish are early fish that are known only from fossil records. They are the earliest known vertebrates, and include the first and extinct fish that lived through the Cambrian to the Quaternary. The study of prehistoric fish is ...
, authoring many papers and a series of
monograph
A monograph is generally a long-form work on one (usually scholarly) subject, or one aspect of a subject, typically created by a single author or artist (or, sometimes, by two or more authors). Traditionally it is in written form and published a ...
s. His studies of rocks and fossils in Scotland overturned earlier work on fossil fish, establishing new
taxonomic classification
In biology, taxonomy () is the scientific study of naming, defining ( circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics. Organisms are grouped into taxa (singular: taxon), and these groups are given ...
s. His honours included fellowships from a range of learned societies, including the
Royal Society of Edinburgh
The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was establis ...
, the
Royal Society of London
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, r ...
, and the
Geological Society of London
The Geological Society of London, known commonly as the Geological Society, is a learned society based in the United Kingdom. It is the oldest national geological society in the world and the largest in Europe, with more than 12,000 Fellows.
Fe ...
. Among his awards for his work on fossil fish are the
Lyell Medal
The Lyell Medal is a prestigious annual scientific medal given by the Geological Society of London, equal in status to the Murchison Medal. This medal is awarded based on one Earth Scientist's exceptional contribution of research to the scientific ...
and the
Royal Medal
The Royal Medal, also known as The Queen's Medal and The King's Medal (depending on the gender of the monarch at the time of the award), is a silver-gilt medal, of which three are awarded each year by the Royal Society. Two are given for "the mo ...
.
Early life
Ramsay Heatley Traquair was born on 30 July 1840 in the manse at
Rhynd
Rhynd () is a hamlet in Perth and Kinross, Scotland. It is located southeast of Perth, on the south side of the River Tay.
The parish church was built in 1842, and replaced an earlier church at Easter Rhynd, southeast, where the churchyard ca ...
,
Perthshire
Perthshire (Scottish English, locally: ; ), officially the County of Perth, is a Shires of Scotland, historic county and registration county in central Scotland. Geographically it extends from Strathmore, Angus and Perth & Kinross, Strathmore ...
, Scotland the youngest of the eight children of Elizabeth Mary Bayley (1800-1843)
[Traquair, Ramsay Heatley (1840–1912)](_blank)
Roberta L. Paton, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, Retrieved 7 August 2011 and the Rev James Traquair.
His father was a
Church of Scotland
The Church of Scotland (CoS; ; ) is a Presbyterian denomination of Christianity that holds the status of the national church in Scotland. It is one of the country's largest, having 245,000 members in 2024 and 259,200 members in 2023. While mem ...
clergyman originally from
Lasswade
Lasswade is a village and civil parish in Midlothian, Scotland, on the River North Esk, south of Edinburgh city centre, contiguous with Bonnyrigg and between Dalkeith to the east and Loanhead to the west. Melville Castle lies to the north ...
.
The family moved to 10 Duncan Street in south
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...
when his father retired, soon after Traquair's birth. Traquair attended preparatory school, followed by further schooling at the
Edinburgh Institution.
From 1857, he studied medicine and later fish anatomy at the
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...
graduating with a degree in medicine in August 1862.
He was presented with a gold medal for his MD thesis on flatfish, on the "Asymmetry of the
Pleuronectidae
Pleuronectidae, also known as righteye flounders, are a family of flounders. They are called "righteye flounders" because most species lie on the sea bottom on their left sides, with both eyes on their right sides. The Paralichthyidae are the o ...
".
[TRAQUAIR, Dr. Ramsay Heatley, F.R.S.](_blank)
in ''Men and Women of the Time: A Dictionary of Contemporaries'', George Washington Moon, 1891 The anatomists he studied and worked with at the University included
John Goodsir
John Goodsir (20 March 1814 – 6 March 1867) was a Scottish anatomist and a pioneer in the formulation of cell theory.
Early life
Goodsir was born on 20 March 1814 in Anstruther, Fife, the son of Elizabeth Dunbar Taylor and John Goods ...
and
William Turner.
Career
Traquair initially stayed on at the University of Edinburgh, working as an anatomy demonstrator from 1863 to 1866.
[TRAQUAIR, Ramsay Heatley](_blank)
Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2007, Retrieved 7 August 2011 He then took up the post of Professor of Natural History at the
Royal Agricultural College
The Royal Agricultural University (RAU), formerly the Royal Agricultural College, is a public university in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, England. Established in 1845, it was the first agricultural college in the English-speaking world.
...
in
Cirencester
Cirencester ( , ; see #Pronunciation, below for more variations) is a market town and civil parish in the Cotswold District of Gloucestershire, England. Cirencester lies on the River Churn, a tributary of the River Thames. It is the List of ...
.
This appointment included a testimonial from
T. H. Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist and anthropologist who specialized in comparative anatomy. He has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
The stor ...
, however Traquair's stay at Cirencester was brief as he felt that "this post isolated him from research".
Moving to
Dublin
Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...
, Ireland, in 1867, Traquair took up the position of Professor of Zoology at the
Royal College of Science
The Royal College of Science was a higher education institution located in South Kensington; it was a constituent college of Imperial College London from 1907 until it was wholly absorbed by Imperial in 2002. Still to this day, graduates from t ...
, working and teaching there for six years.
This was a government position, with the appointment being made by the "Lords of the Committee of Council on Education".
One of the honours accorded him during this period was his election in 1871 to the
Royal Irish Academy
The Royal Irish Academy (RIA; ), based in Dublin, is an academic body that promotes study in the natural sciences, arts, literature, and social sciences. It is Ireland's premier List of Irish learned societies, learned society and one of its le ...
.
On 5 June 1873 he married the artist Phoebe Anna Moss (
Phoebe Anna Traquair
Phoebe Anna Traquair (; 24 May 1852 – 4 August 1936) was an Irish-born artist, who achieved international recognition for her role in the Arts and Crafts movement in Scotland, as an illustrator, painter and embroiderer. Her works included larg ...
), whom he had met in Dublin. They moved to
Colinton
Colinton is a suburb of Edinburgh, Scotland situated southwest of the city centre. Up until the late 18th century it appears on maps as Collington. It is bordered by Dreghorn to the south and Craiglockhart to the north-east. To the north-w ...
Farm in the south-west of Edinburgh. They had three children:
Ramsay
Ramsay may refer to:
People
* Ramsay (surname), people named Ramsay
* Clan Ramsay, a Scottish clan
* Ramsay brothers, Indian film makers
* Richard Sorge (1895–1944), Soviet spy codenamed "Ramsay"
Places Australia
* Ramsay, Queensland, a lo ...
(1874); Henry (Harry) Moss (1875); and Hilda (1879).
That same year, Traquair was transferred (again by the government) to Edinburgh to become the first Keeper of the Natural History Collections at the Museum of Science and Art (later the
Royal Scottish Museum
The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, Scotland, is a museum of Scottish history and culture.
It was formed in 2006 with the merger of the new Museum of Scotland, with collections relating to Scottish antiquities, culture and history, ...
).
This position had been created by the government to ensure that the museum collections remained independent rather than under the control of the University of Edinburgh's Professor of Natural History,
Wyville Thomson.

Traquair would spend the next 33 years working in Edinburgh in charge of the museum's natural history collections, building up a large collection of fossil fish.
One of the locations where Traquair carried out work on fossil fish was the gorge of
Dura Den, in Fife, Scotland, and his collection from here and elsewhere was considered one of the finest in the world at the time. The deposits that he studied included the
Old Red Sandstone
Old Red Sandstone, abbreviated ORS, is an assemblage of rocks in the North Atlantic region largely of Devonian age. It extends in the east across Great Britain, Ireland and Norway, and in the west along the eastern seaboard of North America. It ...
and the
Carboniferous
The Carboniferous ( ) is a Geologic time scale, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), system of the Paleozoic era (geology), era that spans 60 million years, from the end of the Devonian Period Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the ...
rocks of Scotland.
Fossil fish that he classified included the
Palaeoniscidae
Palaeoniscidae is an extinct family of "palaeoniscoid" ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii). The family includes the genus ''Palaeoniscum'' and potentially other Palaeozoic and Mesozoic early actinopterygian genera. The name is derived from the Anc ...
and the
Platysomidae, overturning earlier work by
Louis Agassiz
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz ( ; ) FRS (For) FRSE (May 28, 1807 – December 14, 1873) was a Swiss-born American biologist and geologist who is recognized as a scholar of Earth's natural history.
Spending his early life in Switzerland, he recei ...
.
Much of this work was published over a period of some 37 years as a series of monographs from the
Palaeontographical Society
The Palaeontographical Society is a learned society, established in 1847, and is the oldest extant Society devoted to the advancement of palaeontological knowledge.
The Society publishes monographs that further its primary purpose, which is to pro ...
, with some parts being published posthumously.
In 1881, Traquair was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
of London.
[Ramsay H. Traquair, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S. L. & E., F.G.S.](_blank)
1913, Geological Magazine
The ''Geological Magazine'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal established in 1864, covering the earth sciences. It publishes original scientific research papers on geological topics. The journal is published bimonthly by Cambridge University ...
(Decade V), Volume 10, Issue 01, pp 47–48 He was also a visiting lecturer at the
Natural History Museum
A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history scientific collection, collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, Fungus, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleo ...
in London (then part of the British Museum), twice being appointed '
Swiney Lecturer on Geology at the British Museum (Natural History)' for two five-year periods, from 1883 to 1887 and then again from 1896 to 1900.
Traquair was also a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh
The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was establis ...
and a Fellow of the
Geological Society of London
The Geological Society of London, known commonly as the Geological Society, is a learned society based in the United Kingdom. It is the oldest national geological society in the world and the largest in Europe, with more than 12,000 Fellows.
Fe ...
.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1874, also serving several periods as Councillor, and being a Vice-President of the Society from 1904 to 1910.
[Former Fellows of The Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002](_blank)
Royal Society of Edinburgh, p.941, accessed 8 August 2011 He was elected to the Geological Society of London in 1874.
Family
Traquair was married to the artist
Phoebe Anna Traquair
Phoebe Anna Traquair (; 24 May 1852 – 4 August 1936) was an Irish-born artist, who achieved international recognition for her role in the Arts and Crafts movement in Scotland, as an illustrator, painter and embroiderer. Her works included larg ...
(née Moss) and they had two sons and a daughter,
Ramsay
Ramsay may refer to:
People
* Ramsay (surname), people named Ramsay
* Clan Ramsay, a Scottish clan
* Ramsay brothers, Indian film makers
* Richard Sorge (1895–1944), Soviet spy codenamed "Ramsay"
Places Australia
* Ramsay, Queensland, a lo ...
,
Henry (Harry) Moss, and Hilda. Ramsay became an architect and Harry an
ophthalmic surgeon in Edinburgh.
Awards and honours
Traquair received the 1881 award from the Wollaston Fund, and in 1901 was awarded the
Lyell Medal
The Lyell Medal is a prestigious annual scientific medal given by the Geological Society of London, equal in status to the Murchison Medal. This medal is awarded based on one Earth Scientist's exceptional contribution of research to the scientific ...
, both from the
Geological Society of London
The Geological Society of London, known commonly as the Geological Society, is a learned society based in the United Kingdom. It is the oldest national geological society in the world and the largest in Europe, with more than 12,000 Fellows.
Fe ...
. Other awards included the triennial Neill Prize (1874–77) and the biennial Makdougall-Brisbane Prize (1898–1900), both from the
Royal Society of Edinburgh
The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was establis ...
.
Traquair was awarded an honorary LLD from the University of Edinburghin 1893.
In 1907 he received the
Royal Medal
The Royal Medal, also known as The Queen's Medal and The King's Medal (depending on the gender of the monarch at the time of the award), is a silver-gilt medal, of which three are awarded each year by the Royal Society. Two are given for "the mo ...
of the
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
.
The Royal Medal citation was "On the ground of his discoveries relating to fossil fishes".
In 1909, Traquair's life and career was documented in the 'Eminent Living Geologists' feature of the
Geological Magazine
The ''Geological Magazine'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal established in 1864, covering the earth sciences. It publishes original scientific research papers on geological topics. The journal is published bimonthly by Cambridge University ...
.
Later years
Traquair retired in 1906 to "The Bush"
[Edinburgh Post Office Directory 1907] in the Edinburgh suburb of
Colinton
Colinton is a suburb of Edinburgh, Scotland situated southwest of the city centre. Up until the late 18th century it appears on maps as Collington. It is bordered by Dreghorn to the south and Craiglockhart to the north-east. To the north-w ...
.
He died on 22 November 1912, at the age of 72, survived by his wife and three children.
He is buried in the graveyard at
Colinton Parish Church
Colinton Parish Church is a congregation of the Church of Scotland. The church building is located in Dell Road, Colinton, Edinburgh, Scotland next to the Water of Leith.
History
St Cuthbert's Church, originally called the parish of Hailes, was ...
, with his grave marked by a headstone designed by his wife
and carved by
Pilkington Jackson
Charles d’Orville Pilkington Jackson RSA, FRBS, FRSA (11 October 1887 – 20 September 1973) was a British sculptor prominent in Scotland in the 20th century. Throughout his career he worked closely with the architect Sir Robert Lorimer. He ...
. Obituaries and memorial notices and articles were published in the ''
Glasgow Herald
''The Herald'' is a Scottish broadsheet newspaper founded in 1783. ''The Herald'' is the longest running national newspaper in the world and is the eighth oldest daily paper in the world. The title was simplified from ''The Glasgow Herald'' in ...
'', as well as a range of scientific journals. His wife was later buried with him, as were the ashes of his son Harry.
References
External links
*
Ramsay Heatley Traquair L. Hussakof, Science New Series, Vol. 37, No. 953 (4 April 1913) pp. 509–511
includes a self-portrait (adjunct to exhibition held at St Andrews Museum, Fife)
Traquair, Ramsay Heatley (1840–1912), zoologist(UK National Archives)
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Traquair, Ramsay Heatley
1840 births
1912 deaths
Scientists from Edinburgh
Scottish naturalists
Royal Medal winners
Scottish palaeontologists
Alumni of the University of Edinburgh
Scottish scholars and academics
Academics of University College Dublin
19th-century Scottish people
Scottish curators
Scottish ichthyologists
Fellows of the Royal Society
Lyell Medal winners
Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
People from Perth and Kinross
Academics of the University of Edinburgh
Academics of the Royal Agricultural University
People educated at Stewart's Melville College