BIOLOGIST

Edward Forbes

1815 - 1854

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Edward Forbes FRS, FGS (12 February 1815 – 18 November 1854) was a Manx naturalist. In 1846, he proposed that the distributions of montane plants and animals had been compressed downslope, and some oceanic islands connected to the mainland, during the recent ice age. This mechanism, which was the first natural explanation to explain the distributions of the same species on now-isolated islands and mountain tops, was discovered independently by Charles Darwin, who credited Forbes with the idea. He also incorrectly deduced the so-called azoic hypothesis, that life under the sea would decline to the point that no life forms could exist below a certain depth. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. Edward Forbes is the 665th most popular biologist (down from 556th in 2019), the 5th most popular biography from Isle of Man (down from 4th in 2019) and the most popular Manx Biologist.

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Among BIOLOGISTS

Among biologists, Edward Forbes ranks 665 out of 1,097Before him are Ferdinand Albin Pax, Paul Nurse, Francisco Hernández de Toledo, Archibald Reiss, Charles Alexandre Lesueur, and Hipólito Ruiz López. After him are Heinz Christian Pander, Eugene Odum, Johann Gerhard König, Amotz Zahavi, Japetus Steenstrup, and Wilhelm Pfeffer.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1815, Edward Forbes ranks 58Before him are Johann Gottfried Piefke, Karl von Blaas, James B. Francis, Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz, Mykhailo Verbytskyi, and Princess Therese of Nassau-Weilburg. After him are Marguerite Bays, Ferdinando Petruccelli della Gattina, Henry Halleck, James Legge, Pavel Fedotov, and Ludvig Holstein-Holsteinborg. Among people deceased in 1854, Edward Forbes ranks 48Before him are Joaquina Vedruna de Mas, Caspar Georg Carl Reinwardt, Simón Rodríguez, Friedrich Ernst Ludwig von Fischer, Juan Mora Fernández, and Anton Pann. After him are Carl Joseph Begas, Friedrich Eduard Beneke, Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, Jérôme-Adolphe Blanqui, William Beresford, 1st Viscount Beresford, and Karl Ludwig von Haller.

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In Isle of Man

Among people born in Isle of Man, Edward Forbes ranks 5 out of 14Before him are Maurice Gibb (1949), Barry Gibb (1946), Robin Gibb (1949), and Rhodri the Great (820). After him are Ned Maddrell (1877), Mark Cavendish (1985), Elizabeth Holloway Marston (1893), Joe Locke (2003), Kieran Tierney (1997), Amy Jackson (1991), and Samantha Barks (1990).

Among BIOLOGISTS In Isle of Man

Among biologists born in Isle of Man, Edward Forbes ranks 1