Clarke Abel

{{short description|British surgeon and naturalist (1780-1826)}}

{{Infobox officeholder

| name = Clarke Abel

| image =Clarke Abel.jpg

| caption =

| office = Chief Medical Officer and Naturalist of the British Embassy to China

| term_start = 1816

| term_end = 1817

| monarch = George III

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| birth_date = 5 September 1780

| birth_place =

| death_date = 24 November 1826

| death_place = Cawnpore, India

| nationality = British

| party =

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| occupation = Surgeon, naturalist

| known_for = Accompanying Lord Amherst on his mission to China, being the first Western scientist to report the presence of the orangutan on the island of Sumatra

| signature =

}}

Clarke Abel (5 September 1780 – 24 November 1826){{cite book |title=Abel, Clarke (1789-1826) |url=https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb10230696n |website=catalogue.bnf.fr |publisher=Bibliothèque Nationale de France |access-date=6 February 2021 |language=fr}} was a British surgeon and naturalist. {{botanist|C. Abel|Abel, Clarke|border=0|inline=1}}

He accompanied Lord Amherst on his mission to China in 1816-17 as the embassy's chief medical officer and naturalist, on the recommendation of Sir Joseph Banks. The mission was Britain's second unsuccessful attempt to establish diplomatic relations with China and involved travelling to the Beijing and the famous botanical gardens of Fa Tee (Huadi) near Canton (Fangcun District).

While in China, Abel collected specimens and seeds of the plant that carries his name, Abelia chinensis, described by Banks' botanical secretary Robert Brown, "with friendly partiality". However a shipwreck and an attack by pirates on the way back to his home in Britain caused him to lose all of his specimens. Abel's Narrative of a Journey in the Interior of China, 1818,{{cite book|url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008586229|author=Abel, Clarke|title=Narrative of a Journey in the Interior of China: And of a Voyage to and from that Country, in the Years 1816 and 1817|location=London|publisher=Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown|year=1818}} gives a detailed account of the collection's misfortunes. However, he had left some specimens with Sir George Staunton at Canton, who was kind enough to return them to him; living specimens of the Chinese Abelia that we know today were introduced by Robert Fortune in 1844.Alice M. Coats, Garden Shrubs and Their Histories (1964) 1992, s.v. "Abelia".

In March 1819 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.{{cite web | url= http://www2.royalsociety.org/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=Show.tcl&dsqDb=Persons&dsqPos=0&dsqSearch=%28Surname%3D%27abel%27%29| title= Library and Archive Catalogue| publisher= Royal Society| accessdate= 5 December 2010}} He was also a member of the Geological Society.According to the title page of his Narrative 1818.

Abel was the first Western scientist to report the presence of the orangutan on the island of Sumatra; the Sumatran Orangutan Pongo abelii Lesson 1827 is named for him.Behlens, Bo, Watkins, Michael. and Grayson, Michael Eponym Dictionary of Mammals, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009 {{ISBN|978-0-801893-04-9}}. p. 1-2) He went on to become the surgeon-in-chief to Lord Amherst when the earl was appointed Governor-general of India. Abel died at Cawnpore, India, 24 November 1826, aged 46.{{cite book | last=Bretschneider|first=Emil|title= History of European Botanical Discoveries in China|year=2011| url= https://books.google.com/books?id=FFU-g42KVEIC | page=225|publisher=SEVERUS Verlag |isbn=9783863471651|accessdate=8 Sep 2016}}

Abel was also the first scientist to describe the Chiru or Tibetan Antelope, in 1826. It is the only member of the genus Pantholops.

In 1919, botanist Takenoshin Nakai published Abeliophyllum, which is a genus of shrubs from Korea, in the olive family, Oleaceae. It was named in Clarke Abel's honour.{{cite web |title=Abeliophyllum Nakai {{!}} Plants of the World Online {{!}} Kew Science |url=https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:28314-1 |website=Plants of the World Online |access-date=30 January 2022 |language=en}} Then in 2010, Landrein published Diabelia, which is a genus of shrubs from China and Korea, in the Caprifoliaceae family.{{cite web |title=Diabelia Landrein {{!}} Plants of the World Online {{!}} Kew Science |url=https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:77105077-1 |website=Plants of the World Online |access-date=30 January 2022 |language=en}}