Douglas Carruthers


Alexander Douglas Mitchell Carruthers was an explorer and naturalist of some repute. He was the son of the Reverend William Mitchell Carruthers of Holbrook, and was an explorer in the Middle East in the early 1900s.

Biography

Carruthers was born in London and was educated at Haileybury College and Trinity College, Cambridge. He worked as secretary to a number of people active at the Royal Geographical Society, and underwent training in land survey work, also becoming an expert taxidermist.
Carruthers took part in the British Museum expedition to Rwenzori Mountains in the Congo, 1905–1906 and sent home specimens of birds and mammals. In 1910 he joined John H. Miller and Morgan Philips Price in an expedition through the desert of Outer Mongolia, publishing two volumes on Unknown Mongolia in 1913.
In Q4, 1915, Carruthers married Mary Morrison Hill Trevor in St. George's, Hanover Square, London. They had no children. She died in 1948, and on 3 September 1948 he married Rosemary Arden Clay. Soon afterwards, she told him that, as a married man, his travelling days were over. He never left Britain thereafter.
During the First World War Carruthers was employed mainly at the War Office compiling maps of the Middle East; his later career consisted largely of writing, map making and working with explorers and travellers.

Awards

In 1910 Carruthers was awarded the Gill Memorial, and in 1912 the Patron's Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, which he was to serve as Honorary Secretary from 1916 to 1921 and as a Fellow from 1909 to 1962. In 1956 Carruthers was awarded the Sykes Medal of the Royal Central Asian Society.

Legacy

In 1972 Professor Owen Lattimore gave The First Douglas Carruthers Memorial Lecture on "Douglas Carruthers and Geographical Contrasts in Central Asia".
He wrote many books, and collected a large number of specimens, some of which are still the only samples of those species in the British Museum, and some bear his name, "nnn Carruthersi".

Death

He died in London on 23 May 1962, aged 79. Upon his death, his papers were lodged at the Royal Geographical Society in London.