Richard Pulteney

Richard Pulteney FRS FRSE FLS (17 February 1730 – 13 October 1801) was an English physician and botanist.

He was born in Loughborough on 17 February 1730, the sole surviving child of thirteen children to Samuel Pulteney (1674–1754), a tailor, and his wife, Mary Tomlinson (1692–1759) from neighbouring Hathern.

[1] His maternal uncle, George Tomlinson of Hathern, instilled in him an early love of Natural History.

After being apprenticed as an apothecary in Loughborough he was then sent to Scotland to study medicine at Edinburgh University where he gained a doctorate (MD) in 1764.

In this small rural community he had ample free time to devote himself to the study of nature.