John Forbes Royle

John Forbes Royle (10 May 1798 – 2 January 1858), British botanist and teacher of materia medica, was born in Kanpur (then Cawnpore) in 1798. He was in charge of the botanical garden at Saharanpur and played a role in the development of economic botany in India.

John Forbes Royle was the only son of William Henry Royle and Isabella Forbes. While still a child, his father died and Royle studied under Sangster of Haddington before going to study at Edinburgh high school. He was influenced by Anthony Todd Thomson to take an interest in botany and natural history. This led him to give up a military career at Addiscombe and chose to study medicine. He joined the service of the East India Company as assistant surgeon and went to Calcutta in 1819. He served with the Bengal army (at various times with the 17th and 87th Regiments, Native Artillery, Cavalry and Infantry) at Dum-Dum and in parts of the North-Western Provinces where he found time to study botany and geology, and made large collections from the Himalayas.

In 1823 Royle was appointed as Superintendent of the botanical garden at Saharanpur which had been established by the East India Company in 1750 with the aim of promoting the introduction of new crops of commercial value. Royle was assisted by Hugh Falconer who also took an interest in paleontology. One of Royle's major interests was in the traditional botanical remedies used by Hindu medical practitioners based on which he would later write On the Antiquity of Hindu Medicine (1837). He noted the effectiveness of many of these remedies. He also began a scheme of recording weather data at Saharanpur. He retired from service in 1831 and returned to England but continued to publish several books.

Royle succeeded John Ayrton Paris in 1836 as professor of materia medica at King's College London, a position he held till 1856. He became a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1833 and the Royal Society in 1837. He made use of his collections to publish his Illustrations of the botany and other branches of the natural history of the Himalayan mountains (2 vols., 1839). In this work he suggested the introduction of cinchona to India stating that in "the Neelgherries a favourable site might without doubt be found for the cinchona". In 1851 he superintended the Indian department of the Great Exhibition. In 1852, his recommendation for the introduction of cinchona was approved by the Lord Dalhousie, governor-general of India. Royle produced a report on this in 1853 but work began only in 1860, two years after Royle's death at Acton near London on 2 January 1858.

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