Frederick DuCane Godman (1834—1919)

Frederick DuCane Godman was one of the great naturalists in the mid-Victorian epoch.

As a boy he appears to have been delicate, and, in fact, was removed from Eton at an early age for this reason. Yet he lived to complete his eighty-fifth year, and enjoyed a good constitution, which served him well in the numerous expeditions undertaken by him to collect material for the magnificent collections, which formed the Godman-Salvin Museum (now in the Natural History Museum, London). He had visited the Black Sea coasts before the Crimean War, and before he went to Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1861 he joined his life-long friend Osbert Salvin for the first time in the long-continued exploration of Central America, the results of which are embodied in their joint monumental work, the sixty-three volumes of the ‘Biologia Centrali-Americana,’ begun in 1879, finished in 1915. He was an enthusiastic entomologist of the school, which laid the firm foundations for modern scientific research. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, London in 1882, and later was appointed a trustee of the British Museum. He was President in 1891—1892, and Vice-President during six years. On the completion of the ‘Biologia’ he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Linnean Society. As editor-in-chief of his magnum opus he acquired a first-rate technical knowledge of printing and plate-making; he was also an expert on Oriental pottery. His first wife was a sister of Henry John Elwes, with whom he had so many tastes in common, alike in the fields of science and of sport.

He died on 19 February 1919 and was laid in the churchyard of Cowfold, close to his Sussex home.