Ridley, Henry (1855– 1956) Colonial official and scientist. Born in Norfolk, United Kingdom, Henry Nicholas Ridley attended Haileybury School where he became an active member of the school’s natural history society. He later attended Exeter College at Oxford University, obtaining a second- class honours degree in science in 1877.

Ridley was then offered a position at the British Museum’s Botany Department. In 1886, he joined an expedition to Fernando de Noronha— an island off the coast of Brazil— that had been sponsored by the Royal Society, and completed reports on the botany, zoology and geology of that island. Ridley first came to Singapore in 1888, when he was appointed director of the Botanic Gardens (see Singapore Botanic Gardens). In Singapore, he became known as ‘Mad Ridley’ or ‘Rubber Ridley’ due to his obsession with rubber trees. Ridley worked in the gardens for over 20 years, propagating Brazilian rubber plants that had been shipped to Singapore from London’s Kew Gardens; experimenting with seeds; and developing a new method of tapping— a technique that came to be widely used in the rubber industry.

From 1896, most of the early rubber estates in Malaya grew rubber trees from seeds provided by the Botanic Gardens. Ridley sent seeds to other parts of the world after devising a method of packing that ensured the survival of a high proportion of seeds on long journeys.

Ridley also explored the region’s forests and islands, identifying and collecting plant species. For instance, he identified 73 new species of the ginger family in Malaya— in the three decades following his retirement, only 30 more were discovered.

After retiring from his Singapore post in 1912, Ridley began work on his monumental Flora of the Malay Peninsula at Kew, where he resided for the rest of his life.

The first of its five volumes was published in 1922. Later, Ridley completed another major work, The Dispersal of Plants throughout the World. This 740- page book first appeared in 1930. Ridley remained keenly interested in botany, and spent the rest of his long life increasing his knowledge of tropical plants.

Photo credit: National Archives of Singapore