| AdminHistory | Joseph Arnold (28 December 1782 – 26 July 1818 in Padang, Sumatra, Netherlands East Indies) was a naval surgeon and naturalist.
Arnold was born on 28 December 1782 in in Beccles, Suffolk, to Edward Arnold. He received a medical education when he was apprenticed to a local surgeon and apothecary, and obtained his surgeon's diploma in Edinburgh in 1807. The following year he started working with the Royal Navy as an assistant surgeon, later being promoted to surgeon on H.M.S. Victory, and H.M.S. Hindostan, the latter of which travelled to Sydney, Australia. He returned to Sydney in 1815 when he was working on the female convict transport, Northampton, as the surgeon-superintendent for the British government. After abandoning plans to settle in Sydney he tried to return to England but was stranded in Batavia when his ship, the Indefatigable, caught fire. Whilst there he was befriended by Sir Stamford Raffles and accepted the post of naturalist under him in Sumatra following a recommendation of Sir Joseph Banks. However, following a brief return to England, Arnold died of fever at Padang, Sumatra, on 26 July 1818. His collection of fossils and shells was deposited in the museum of the Linnean Society, of which he was a fellow. |