William Henry Sykes
William Henry Sykes ( born January 25, 1790 in near Bradford in Yorkshire, † June 16, 1872 in Kensington, London ) was a British soldier, naturalist and politician.
Life and work
William Henry Sykes appeared in 1803 in the service of the British East India Company and adopted under the command of Lord Lake at the siege of Bhurtpoor part and acted as interpreter for Hindustani and Maratha. From 1817 to 1820 he commanded a regiment in the Deccan and subsequently worked as a statistician for the government in Bombay. During this time he gained a census of the Deccan, wrote two statistical reports and wrote a natural history of the region. In the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, he went on 18 June 1833 in retirement.
On February 6, 1834 took him to the Royal Society as their member. In 1835 he was one of the founding members of the Royal Statistical Society, which he was president from 1863 to 1865.
In 1846 he returned to the United Kingdom. He was elected a director of the British East India Company and was 1856/57 the President. From April 2, 1857 until his death he was a member of Parliament for Aberdeen.
Ehrentaxon
George Arnott Walker Arnott named in his honor in 1836, the plant genus Sykesia from the family of Rubiaceae. It is now a synonym for Gaertnera.
Writings (selection )
- On a portion of Dukhun, East Indies. In: Transactions of the Geological Society of London, Second Series, vol. 4 (1836 ) p 409 online
- The Taeping Rebellion in China: its origins, progress, and present condition. Warren Hall & Co., 1863, online
- Notes on the Religious, Moral, and Political State of Ancient India. In: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. # 12
- Catalogue of Mammalia Observed in the Dakhan. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 1 (1832 ), pp. 161-7. ( Reprinted from the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London ) online
- Catalogue of birds ( systematical Arranged ) of the Raptorial, Insessorial, rasorial, Grallatorial, and Natatorial orders, Observed in the Dakhan. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 3 (1832 ), pp. 418-23, 536-43, 597-9, 639-49. ( Reprinted from the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London)
- On the fishes of the Deccan. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 1838 ( 6 ), pp. 157-165.