| Activity | Museum Staff: appointed 2nd class assistant in Department of Botany 17 May 1880; resigned 1888. Worked on Monocotyledons
Ridley had been working at the British Museum when he was asked to take part in an expedition to Brazil; the experience he gained there led to his being chosen for the directorship of the botanical gardens at Singapore. He stayed in this position for more than twenty years, taking advantage of the post to familiarize himself with the botany of the surrounding regions. On retiring from the directorship he continued his natural history studies, living on for another forty-five years. Ridley is most remembered these days for three things: his monumental five-volume Flora of the Malay Peninsula, his key role in establishing rubber as a plantation crop in Malaya, and his interest in the agents of plant dispersal, study of which led to the publication of his important book The Dispersal of Plants Throughout the World in 1930.
1887 Accompanied the Royal Society on an expedition to Brazil. 1888 - 1911 Director of the Botanical Gardens, Singapore. 1889 - 1911 secretary and editor of the 'Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Straits Branch'. 1890 - 1891 he visited Christmasa nd Keeling Islands, and in 1897 he visited Borneo and Sumatra. From 1903 - 1916 he undertook botanical trips to Sarawak, Java, Burma, India and Egypt. In 1907 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. 1914 awarded the Gold Medal from the Rubber Planter's Association. 1928 receives the Frank N. Meyer medal for foreign plant introduction. 1950 he received the Gold Medal of the Linnean Society. |