author
William Baird
d. 1875
A Scottish physician and zoologist, he turned a doctor’s training and years of travel into careful, readable studies of marine life and tiny crustaceans. His best-known work helped popularize the natural history of British entomostracans in the nineteenth century.
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About the author
Born in Berwickshire in 1803, he studied medicine in Edinburgh, Dublin, and Paris before serving as a surgeon with the East India Company. Those years gave him chances to travel widely, and his growing interest in natural history became a lasting part of his work.
After practicing medicine, he joined the British Museum, where he worked with zoological collections and built a strong reputation as a specialist in crustaceans and other small aquatic creatures. He is best remembered for The Natural History of the British Entomostraca (1850), a detailed and influential study that brought together scientific observation and an eye for the living world.
He died in 1872. Although the date given here is 1875, the biographical sources I found identify the zoologist and author William Baird as living from 1803 to 1872, so I have used the details that could be confirmed.