Michael Pakenham Edgeworth

Michael Pakenham Edgeworth
Edgeworth c. 1843–1845
Born	24 May 1812 County Longford, Ireland
Died	30 July 1881(1881-07-30) (aged 69) Eigg Island, Scottish Inner Hebrides
Residence	India
Citizenship	Irish
Alma mater	University of Edinburgh
Partner(s)	Christina (née Macpherson)
Scientific career
Fields	botany
Author abbrev. (botany)	Edgew.

Michael Pakenham Edgeworth (24 May 1812 – 30 July 1881) was an Irish botanist who specialized in seed plants and ferns, and spent most of his life and work in India. He was also a pioneer of photography.

Edgeworth was born in County Longford, Ireland on 24 May 1812, one of twenty-four children of Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744–1817) and his four wives. His mother, Frances Beaufort, was the fourth wife. His older half-sister Maria Edgeworth, born to his father's first wife Anna Maria Edgeworth (née Elers), became a novelist. Among his other siblings were Honora (half-sister), Fanny (sister), Lucy (sister), and Francis (brother). With his wife Christina, whom he married in 1842, Michael had a daughter named Harriet and a second, Christina, who died in infancy.

He attended Charterhouse School in England from September 1823 where his schoolmates included William Makepeace Thackeray and H.G. Liddell. He later studied oriental languages and botany at University of Edinburgh, Scotland, from 1827. A relative, Lord Carrington offered his mother a cadetship for one of her sons. From 1829 - 30 he was at the East India College, Haileybury, ending with appointment to the East India Company on 30 April 1831 as a writer.

Although he is known to have had an estate of 1,659 acres (671 ha) in County Longford, Ireland, at a young age he left for India in 1831 to join the Indian Civil Service of the British Colonial regime. He was initially based at Ambala, Muzaffarnagar, then Saharanpur and finally Banda until 1850 in a series of judicial and administrative posts covering an area from Lahore to Madras. Being possessed of a curious spirit, Edgeworth travelled widely throughout India and the island of Ceylon (present day Sri Lanka) where he collected plants and made notes. In 1850 he was made the Chief of Police of the English settlement Punjab. In addition to his interest in botany, he also wrote about Indian languages, culture, topography, and antiquities.