Robert John Lechmere Guppy

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Robert John Lechmere Guppy (born August 15, 1836 in London; died August 5, 1916 in San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago) was a British-born naturalist after whom the guppy is named. He was one of four children of Robert Guppy, a lawyer, and Amelia Parkinson, a painter and one of the pioneers of photography. "Lechmere," as he was called, was raised by his grandparents, Richard Parkinson and Lucy Lechmere, in Kinnersley Castle, a 13th-century Norman castle in Hereford. He left England at the age of 18 and was shipwrecked on the coast of New Zealand in 1856. After living with the Māoris for two years and mapping the area, Lechmere left New Zealand for Trinidad, where his parents were living. He married Alice Rostant, the daughter of local French creole planters, and became Trinidad's first Superintendent of Schools. Although he had no formal training in the sciences, (he was a civil engineer by trade),^[1] Lechmere wrote and published numerous articles on the palaeontology of the region. There is no truth to the rumor that Guppy was also a clergyman. In fact, he was an agnostic. ^[1]