Background
His father was a wealthy banker, also called Thomas Brown, and had purchased 117 acres of land in Langside from Robert Crawford of Possilpark.
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Thomas Lanfine and Waterhaughs
Edit ProfileEducation
This house was completed in 1780 and Thomas presumably spent his childhood here. He attended Edinburgh University to study botany and was taught by Professor Daniel Rutherford.
Career
He is best remembered for his large donation of his entire lifetime collection of fossils et cetera to Glasgow University which is generally known as the Lanfine Collection. He is thought to have been born in Glasgow in 1774. From 1799 he was Deputy Professor of Botany at Glasgow University under Professor James Jeffray.
He resigned this post in 1816 and was replaced by Robert Graham, just prior to Botany being given its own chair at the university.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1830. He died on 16 March 1853 in Glasgow.
Brown began collecting in 1803 following a gift of 200 minerals from Major Thomas Wilson. He purchased many samples and began collecting in the field in 1816.
Thomas’ daughter gifted his huge collection to be split between Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities.
This collection consists of 5473 mineral samples and around 1600 fully catalogued fossils received by Glasgow University in several instalments between 1875 and 1897. lieutenant included ‘’significant archaeological and ethnographic material’’. 600 items of the mineral collection was passed to Edinburgh University in 1874, where it is now held by their Geology Department.
On Martha’s death her fortune was left to Glasgow University to provide the Lanfine Bursaries.
They had four children, Martha, Thomas, Harriet and Marian. Thomas (d1873) was an author whose works included Borgia: A Tragedy
A portrait of Thomas Brown by Colvin Smith from 1840 hangs in the Court Office of Glasgow University.
A portrait also hangs in the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery.
