[1] Born on Starucca Creek, Upper Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, the grandson of Colonel Timothy Pickering, after the death of his father he was raised in the house of his esteemed grandfather in Wenham, Massachusetts.

[1] A practicing physician in Philadelphia, he became active as librarian and curator at the city's Academy of Natural Sciences.

In 1843, he traveled to the Middle East, Zanzibar and India to continue his research for his book on the Races of Man.

He was an associate of many important figures in America's intellectual landscape, including Asa Gray, Horatio Hale, James Dwight Dana and Louis Agassiz.

A subspecies of North American garter snake, Thamnophis sirtalis pickeringii, is named in his honor.