Palaeontologist and museum curator. Traquair was born in the manse at Rhynd (Perthshire), the youngest child of the Rev. James Traquair. He was raised in Edinburgh, educated at the Edinburgh Institution and the University of Edinburgh, where he studied medicine and completed a thesis on fish anatomy (1862). His lecturers included Prof. John Goodsir (1814-67) and Prof. Sir William Turner (1832 - 1916). He was employed as an anatomy demonstrator at the University of Edinburgh (1863-66) and was then briefly appointed Professor of Natural History at the Royal Agricultural College in Gloucestershire, before taking the post of Professor of Zoology at the Royal College of Science in Dublin (1867-74). There he met and married Phoebe Moss (1852 - 1936), and the couple settled in Colinton when Traquair was appointed Keeper of the Natural History Collections at the Museum of Science and Art (now the National Museum of Scotland) in Edinburgh. This was a difficult position, the museum having previously been the fiefdom of Professor Charles Wyville Thomson (1830-82) and the University of Edinburgh, who had shown poor curatorship over the collection. Traquair was an endearing character and built the reputation of the museum as well as its collection of fossil fish. He was a dedicated scientist who became the foremost expert of his time on fossil fish, collecting specimens from the Silurian, Devonian (Old Red Sandstone) and Carboniferous rocks of Scotland (including the rich fish beds of Dura Den) and publishing a series of monographs and papers on his work. Many of these works were illustrated by his wife Phoebe Traquair.
He was honoured by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of which he became a Fellow in 1874 and served as Vice-President (1904-10). He was also honoured by the Geological Society of London, winning its prestigious Lyell Medal in 1901, and the Royal Society, received its Royal Medal in 1907.
He died at his home in Colinton and lies buried in the kirkyard of Colinton Parish Church, next to his wife and son.
