The Honorable Dr John Macadam (29 May 1827 – 2 September 1865), was a Scottish-Australian chemist, medical teacher, Australian politician and cabinet minister, and honorary secretary of the Burke and Wills expedition.

[3] His fellow industrialists and he in the craft had developed, using chemistry, the processes for the large-scale industrial printing of fabrics for which these plants in the area became known.

[20] Macadam became a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly of the self-governing Colony of Victoria[21] as a radical and supporter of the Land Convention,[22] representing Castlemaine.

[25] He was active in erecting the Society's Meeting Hall (their present building)[26] and was involved in the institute's initiative to obtain a royal charter.

[27][28] Between 1857 and 1865, Macadam served as honorary secretary to the Exploration Committee of the Royal Society of Victoria, which organised the Burke and Wills expedition.

The expedition was organised by the society with the aim of crossing the continent of Australia from the south to the north coasts, map it, and collect scientific data and specimens.

In 1860–61, Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills led the expedition of 19 men with that intention, crossing Australia from Melbourne in the south, to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north, a distance around 2,000 miles.

Three men ultimately travelled over 3,000 miles from Melbourne to the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria and back to the Depot Camp at Cooper Creek.

Mueller had done a great deal of taxonomy of the flora, naming innumerable genera but chose this "...a beautiful genus dedicated to John Macadam, M.D.

"[36] On 7 August 1858, Macadam, along with Tom Wills, officiated at a game of football played between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar.

[44] She had arrived three days before the wedding with her maid on the Admiral, the same ship on which he had travelled out a year earlier, which reached Hobson's Bay (Melbourne's port) on 15 September 1856, having set sail from London on 7 June 1856.

She was the second daughter of John Clark,[46] of Levenfield House in Alexandria,[47] the Vale of Leven, a short distance north of Glasgow in West Dunbartonshire.

[53] The inscription on his father's burial monument under His only children has him listed under his elder brother (above), who died in infancy, but does not for some reason give William's date of death on it.

[54] In March 1865 Macadam sailed to New Zealand to give evidence at the trial of Captain W. A. Jarvey, accused of fatally poisoning his wife, but the jury did not reach a verdict.

His medical-student assistant John Drummond Kirkland gave evidence at the trial in Macadam's place, and Jarvey was convicted.

[56][57] The Australian News commented, "At the time of his death, Dr Macadam was but 38 years of age; there can be little doubt that the various and onerous duties he discharged for the public must be attributed in great measure the shortening of his days.

"[58] The Australian Medical Journal stated, "For some time it had been evident to his friends that his general health was giving way: that a frame naturally robust and vigorous was gradually becoming undermined by the incessant and harassing duties of the multifarious offices he filled."