10th June 1858
Death of the man who coined the term ‘nucleus’
Botanist Robert Brown was born in Montrose in 1773 and studied at the University of Edinburgh. He was posted to Ireland on military service and, in his early 40s, travelled on an expedition to South Africa and Australia where he stayed for several years collecting and cataloguing specimens.
Much of what he collected had never been seen by Europeans before. Upon his return, he wrote several scientific papers, in one of which he named the core of cells the nucleus. We have used that term ever since.