| Activity | Although he didn't live a very long life, Forbes managed to fill every minute of the time he had with an inspiring level of activity, and by the time he died had reached the first rank of British naturalists. Indeed, he seems to have more or less worked himself to death by overextending himself as a field and museum researcher, teacher, writer, and editor and administrator. Forbes is remembered more for his varied interests and attempts to understand how the various studies of natural history all fit together than by his actual conclusions on particular problems (which often proved incorrect). One of his famous miscalculations was his "azoic theory," which postulated that marine life should not exist below 300 fathoms; another famous misdirection was his support of the principle of polarity, involving two supposed major periods of creation (this prompted Alfred Russel Wallace to publish his famous 1855 "Sarawak law" essay in response). Forbes also was an overzealous supporter of sunken land bridge interpretations of faunal pattern discontinuities. In all fairness, however, Forbes was, more importantly, perhaps the first naturalist to routinely consider a complex of possible causes, both historical and ecological, when trying to explain current distribution patterns. Further, he did so on the basis of a thorough technique both in geology, and in ecology and zoology. He has been variously credited as being one of the "fathers" of marine biology, paleoecology, invertebrate paleontology, oceanography, ecology, and biogeography, an impressive array of associations.
In 1832 he began investigating the natural history of the coast of the Isle of Man and by 1833 he had moved on to investigating the natural history of the coastal areas of Norway. In 1834 he began dredging for invertebrates in the Irish Sea and from 1835 - 7 he visited field locations and museums throughout Europe. From 1838 - 40 he gave lectures on Natural History throughout England and Scotland. 1841-2 he was appointed as the naturalist on HMS Beacon where he was involved in collecting marine animals in the aegean sea. 1842 he was appointed as the chair in botany at Kings College, London and he was hired as a curator by the Geological Society. He was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1843 and in 1844 he was hired as a palaeontologist by the Geological Survey. In 1845 he was made a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1850 he was involved with a dredging project in the Western Hebrides and in 1853 he was elected president of the Geological Society of London and president of the Geological Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1854 he gained the regius chair in natural history at Edinburgh |