James Mackintosh

Mackintosh was born on 24 October 1765 at Aldourie in Inverness-shire, Scotland. He studied at King's College in the University of Aberdeen from 1780 and then at the University of Edinburgh, where he took a medical degree in 1787. He was also called to the bar, and worked at various times as a journalist, judge, administrator, professor and politician.

Knighted in 1803, Mackintosh was appointed Recorder of Bombay that year and took up the post in 1804. Within months of his arrival he gathered scholars and officials at his residence to discuss the history, geography and cultures of the subcontinent, forming the Literary Society of Bombay. The society published transactions and built a library and collections; it was subsequently affiliated to the Royal Asiatic Society and, through successive mergers and renamings, became the Asiatic Society of Mumbai, which continues to occupy the Town Hall in Mumbai. Ill health forced Mackintosh to leave India in November 1811.

Mackintosh sat in the House of Commons as Member of Parliament for Nairn from 1813 to 1818 and for Knaresborough from 1818 until his death. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and was made a Privy Counsellor in 1828. He died in London on 30 May 1832.[2][3]