James Hector



Sir James Hector (March 16, 1834–November 6, 1907) was a Scottish geologist, naturalist, and surgeon who accompanied the Palliser Expedition as a surgeon and geologist. He went on to have a lengthy career as a government employed man of science in New Zealand, and during this period he dominated the Colony's scientific institutions in a way that no single man has since.

He attended the Edinburgh Academy. At 14, he began articling as an actuary at his father's office. He joined University of Edinburgh as a medical student and received his medical degree in 1856. Shortly after receiving his medical degree, upon the recommendation of Sir Roderick Murchison – director-general of the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom – Hector was appointed geologist on the Palliser Expedition under the command of John Palliser. The goal of the Palliser expedition to British North America (now Canada) was to explore new train routes for the Canadian Pacific Railway and to explore new species of plants.

In 1858, when Palliser's expedition was exploring a mountain pass near the continental divide of the Canadian Rockies, Hector was kicked and seriously wounded by a packhorse. While Hector recovered, the pass and nearby river have been known since as the Kicking Horse Pass and Kicking Horse River respectively. The reason why Hector was kicked was because his horse fell in the river and while Hector and his companions were helping him, the packhorse kicked Hector in the chest. After 4 hours of Hector being unconscious, his companions declared James Hector dead. They were digging his grave when some natives came to help,suddenly one of them noticed Hector's chest was moving. The native dragged him out of the grave and waited until he regained consciousness. James wrote about the expedition in his diary and here is a passage from it: "In attempting to recatch my own horse, which had strayed off while we were engaged with the one in the water, he kicked me in the chest".

Following his return to Britain after the Palliser expedition, Hector again secured a paid scientific position with Roderick Murchison’s help. In 1862 he arrived in Dunedin in New Zealand to conduct a three year geological survey of Otago. Hector travelled throughout the south of New Zealand's South Island to assess its potential for settlement and to record the location of useful minerals. He also assembled a staff of half a dozen men to assist with such tasks as fossil collecting, chemical analysis, and botanical and zoological taxonomy.

In 1865 Hector was appointed to found the Geological Survey of New Zealand, and he moved to Wellington to supervise the construction of the Colonial Museum, which was to be the Survey’s headquarters. As the chief Government-employed scientist, Hector gave politicians advice on questions as diverse as exporting wool to Japan and improving fibre production from New Zealand flax. His political influence was underlined by his marriage in 1868 to Maria Georgiana Monro, daughter of the speaker of the House of Representatives.

Hector managed the Colony’s premier scientific society – the New Zealand Institute – for thirty-five years, and from 1885 was Chancellor of the University of New Zealand. He controlled virtually every aspect of state-funded science. He had close and, at times, tense relationships with other men of science, in particular Julius von Haast. At the end of his career he was criticized for failing to acquire Maori artifacts for the Colonial Museum and for not adequately defending his departments from the Liberal Government’s funding cuts. In 1902, for example, the ethnographer Elsdon Best wrote to Augustus Hamilton, the future director of the Colonial Museum, to state that Hector should be forced from office and that they should ‘put a live man in in his place’.

Hector retired in 1903, after four decades at the centre of organized science in New Zealand. He died in Lower Hutt, New Zealand, in 1907.