Alexander Garden (104)

Election date: 1768 (Elected to the revived American Philosophical Society. Elected to the American Society in 1768.)
APS Office(s): Alexander Garden (January 1730–15 April 1791) was a physician and naturalist, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1768. Born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, he received a solid early education in mathematics, natural philosophy, and ancient and modern languages. He was an apprentice and then a student at Marischal College (where he eventually earned his M.D. degree), served as a naval surgeon’s mate, and studied under the king’s botanist at Edinburgh University. Garden then departed for Charleston, South Carolina, where he established a profitable medical practice and continued his botanical and zoological research. A trip to New York and Philadelphia put him in contact with APS members Cadwallader Colden, Benjamin Franklin, and John Bartram. He also corresponded extensively with—and sent countless specimens, including an electric eel, to—Carolus Linnaeus, Peter Collinson, Johannes Gronovius, John Ellis, and John Clayton. Garden conducted a botanical excursion in Florida in 1754, and in 1755 joined an expedition into Cherokee territory near the Blue Ridge Mountains. In recognition of his discovery and classification of numerous plants and animals, Linnaeus nominated him for membership in the Royal Society of Upsala in 1763. He was also a member of the Royal Society of London, the Royal Society of Arts, the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, the Philadelphia Medical Society, and the American Society. Garden sided with Britain during the American Revolution. In 1782, his property was confiscated (and later given to his patriot son) and he was banished. Following trips to France, Switzerland, and Scotland for his health, he spent the rest of his life in England, where he became vice-president of the Royal Society. He published in Philosophical Transactions and prepared several natural histories that were never printed; his major published treatise on the Virginia pink root does not survive. (PI, ANB, DNB, DAB)

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