Matthew Forster Heddle

Matthew Forster Heddle FRSE (28 April 1828 – 19 November 1897) was a Scottish physician and amateur mineralogist active through the 19th century.

In 1845, he entered as a medical student at the University of Edinburgh, and subsequently studied chemistry and mineralogy at Klausthal and Freiburg.

On his return he devoted himself with great assiduity to mineralogy, and formed one of the finest collections by means of personal exploration in almost every part of Scotland.

His proposers were John Hutton Balfour, Peter Guthrie Tait, Alexander Crum Brown, and Sir Archibald Geikie.

This he did not live to complete, but the manuscripts fell into able hands, and The Mineralogy of Scotland, in two volumes, edited by JG Goodchild, was issued in 1901.

He is buried in the ground of A. MacKechnie, surgeon, his father-in law, with his wife in the churchyard of St Andrews Cathedral.

Their daughter Clementina Christian Sinclair Heddle (1860–1942) married the mineralogist Alexander Thoms FRSE.