George Finlayson

{{Use British English|date=July 2015}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2020}}

{{Infobox scientist

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| name = George Finlayson

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| image = Florists' review (microform) (16471254157).jpg

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| birth_date = {{birth year|1790}}

| birth_place = Thurso, Great Britain

| death_date = {{death date and age|1823|1790}}

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George Finlayson (1790–1823) was a Scottish naturalist and traveller. He was called one of the best naturalists of his day, and he was noted for his pioneering studies of the plants, animals, and people of southern Thailand and the Malay peninsula.{{cite book|author=Henry Ginsburg|title=Thai Art and Culture: Historic Manuscripts from Western Collections|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=g6yRsrUpWpcC&pg=PA13|year=2000|publisher=University of Hawaii Press|isbn=978-0-8248-2367-2|page=13}}

Finlayson was born in Thurso in 1790. He was clerk to Dr Somerville, chief of the army medical staff in Scotland,{{cite news|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Tb5LAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA801|title=Review of New Books|date=17 December 1825|work=The London literary gazette and journal of belles lettres, arts, sciences, etc}} and afterwards to Dr Farrel, chief of the army medical staff in Ceylon. He then transferred to Bengal, and he attached to the 8th Light Dragoons as assistant surgeon in 1819. In 1821 and 1822, he accompanied the Crawfurd trade mission to Siam (now Thailand) and Cochinchina (now Vietnam) as a naturalist,{{cite book|last=Macfarlane|first=Charles|authorlink=Charles Macfarlane|title=Our Indian Empire: Its History and Present State, from the Earliest Settlement of the British in Hindostan, to the Close of the Year 1846: Volume 2 |year=2001|publisher=Adamant Media|isbn=0-543-92398-3|page=251}} returning with it to Calcutta in 1823. By this time, his health was thoroughly broken. He died on the passage from Bengal to Scotland in August 1823.{{Cite AmCyc|wstitle=Finlayson, George}}

The journal he had kept during the mission was edited, with a prefatory note on the author, by Sir Stamford Raffles, F.R.S., and published in 1826 under the title The Mission to Siam and Hue, the capital of Cochin China, in the years 1821–2, from the Journal of the late George Finlayson, Esq.{{cite book|last1=Finlayson|first1=George|last2=Raffles|first2=Thomas Stamford|title=The Mission to Siam, and Hué, the Capital of Cochin China, in the Years 1821–2|publisher=BiblioBazaar|isbn=978-1-115-94823-4|year=2009}}'The Mystery of the Finlayson Map', in: Forbes, Andrew, and Henley, David, in: Ancient Chiang Mai Volume 3. Chiang Mai ,Cognoscenti Books, 2012. ASIN: B006IN1RNW

The bird stripe-throated bulbul (Pycnonotus finlaysoni) and the Finlayson's squirrel (Callosciurus finlaysonii) are named in Finlayson's honour.{{cite book|author1=Bo Beolens|author2=Michael Watkins|author3=Michael Grayson|title=The Eponym Dictionary of Mammals|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I-kSmWLc6vYC&pg=PA134|year=2009|publisher=JHU Press|isbn=978-0-8018-9533-3|page=134}}

{{Botanist|Finl.|Finlayson, George}}