Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Jameson, William (1796-1873)
JAMESON, WILLIAM (1796–1873), botanist, born in Edinburgh on 3 Oct. 1796, was son of William Jameson, a writer to the signet. In 1814 he attended the university classes of Thomas Charles Hope [q. v.] and Robert Jameson [q. v.] in chemistry and natural history, and obtained his diploma from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. In 1818 he became surgeon on a whaling vessel visiting Baffin's Bay and botanising on Waygat Island (Memoirs of the Wernerian Nat. Hist. Soc. iii. 416). On his return he, in 1819, attended lectures on mineralogy and made pedestrian visits to Ben Lomond and Ben Lawers. In 1820 he made his second voyage to Baffin's Bay, visiting Duck Island in lat. 74° north, and in the same year he sailed as surgeon for South America. While on the voyage to Lima in 1822, he kept a meteorological journal en route (ib. vi. 203), and, deciding to remain in Peru, practised at Guayaquil until 1826, when he removed to the better climate of Quito. He practised medicine there for a year, and in 1827 became professor of chemistry and botany in the university. In 1832 he was appointed assayer to the mint, and in 1861 director; and in 1864 the Ecuadorean government appointed him to prepare a synopsis of the flora of the country. Of this two volumes and part of a third were printed in 1865, under the title ‘Synopsis Plantarum Quitensium,’ but the work was never completed. While in Ecuador he married, was converted to catholicism, and in recognition of his scientific eminence was created by Queen Isabella a caballero of Spain. In 1869, on his way home to Edinburgh, he visited three sons who had settled in the Argentine Republic. In 1872 he left again for Ecuador, but was seized with fever soon after his return to Quito, and died there on 22 June 1873.
Jameson long corresponded with Sir William and Sir Joseph Hooker, Balfour, Lindley, Sir William Jardine, Reichenbach, and Anderson-Henry, and sent home many new species of plants, among which species of anemone, gentian, and the moss Dicranum bear his name. A genus of ferns described by Hooker and Greville is also called Jamesonia. In addition to his papers in the ‘Memoirs of the Wernerian Society,’ the ‘Companion to the Botanical Magazine,’ Hooker's ‘London Journal of Botany,’ the ‘Journals’ of the Linnean and Royal Geographical societies, and the ‘Transactions of the Edinburgh Botanical Society,’ Jameson's only important work is ‘Synopsis Plantarum Quitensium,’ Quito, 1865, 8vo.
[Trans. Bot. Soc. Edinburgh, 1873; Royal Soc. Cat. of Scientific Papers.]