John Fleming (naturalist)

Rev John Fleming DD FRSE FRS FSA (10 January 1785 – 18 November 1857) was a Scottish minister, naturalist, zoologist and geologist. He named and described a number of species of molluscs. During his life he tried to reconcile theology with science.

He was born on Kirkroads Farm near Bathgate in Linlithgowshire, the son of Alexander Fleming and his wife Catherine Nimmo.

After his studies at the University of Edinburgh were completed in 1805, the following year he became a pastor in the Church of Scotland and was assigned to the parish of Bressay in Scotland. He was ordained in 1808. From 1808 in 1834 he served in various parishes in Scotland. In 1808, he participated in founding the Wernerian Society, a learned society devoted to the study of natural history.

John Fleming joined the Royal Society on 25 February 1813. In 1814, he became a doctor of theology at the University of St. Andrews and in the same year he became a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 1824, he became involved in a famous controversy with the geologist William Buckland (1784–1856) about the nature of The Flood as described in the Bible.

Fleming was a close associate of Robert Edmond Grant, who considered that the same laws of life affected all organisms. In 1828, Fleming published his History of British Animals. This book addressed not only extant, but also fossil species. It explained the presence of fossils by climate change, suggesting that extinct species would have survived if weather conditions had been favorable. These theories contributed to the advancement of biogeography, and exerted some influence on Charles Darwin (1809–1882).

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