James Sykes Gamble

James Sykes Gamble
James Sykes Gamble
Born	1847 London
Died	1925 Haslemere, West Sussex
Fields	Botany
Known for	The book A Manual of Indian Timbers
Notable awards	Fellow of the Royal Society

James Sykes Gamble CIE FRS FLS (2 July 1847–16 October 1925) was an English botanist who specialized in the flora of the Indian sub-continent; he became Director of the British Imperial Forest School at Dehradun, and a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Gamble was born at Portland Place, London, the second son of Harpur Gamble, M.D., R.N. and Isabella. He completed his formal education at the Royal Naval School, New Cross, before going up to Oxford, where he attended Magdalen College, studying mathematics, at which he excelled, gaining a First in the Final Schools in 1868. In the same year, he sat for the Indian Civil Service examinations, and gained an appointment in the Indian Forest Department the following year. Gamble later studied at the École nationale des eaux et forêts, Nancy (1869-1871) where he gained an interest in taxonomy.

Gamble sailed for India in 1871 to join the Imperial Forest Department, and ultimately became Director of the Imperial Forest School at Dehradun. His first posting was in Burma but after a year he moved to Bengal where he worked in the Darjeeling forests. Here he produced the first list of the trees and shrubs of Darjeeling. From 1872 to 1877 he worked mostly in the Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri area with short visits to Allahabad and Shimla. In 1877 he moved to the capital in Shimla where he worked on the local flora. In 1879 he moved back to Calcutta and travelled around the Sunderbans, Chota Nagpore, Santal Parganas and Orissa regions. He worked along with his colleage Sulpiz Kurz at the Calcutta Herbarium and Dr George King. In 1890, Gamble founded the Forest School Herbarium (renamed the Dehradun Herbarium in 1908). In 1882 he was made Conservator in the Madras Presidency and here he worked in collaboration with W. A. Talbot of the Bombay Presidency. During this time he took an interest in the cultivation of Eucalyptus globulus in the Nilgiris. In 1890 he moved to the North-West Provinces and became Director of the Forest School in Dehra Dun. He stayed in this post until his retirement in 1899. At Dehra Dun he developed his collections, adding from the Himalayan regions and also receiving specimens from J.F. Duthie and C.G. Rogers. This collection was described by Sir George King in 1899 as "probably the largest collection of plants ever owned in India." After his retirement Gamble also collected at the Cape of Good Hope in 1890 and from Switzerland, Italy, Sardinia, Malta, Gibraltar and South Norway. He was appointed CIE in the 1899 Birthday Honours