Edward Forbes was born on February 12, 1815, in Douglas, Isle of Man.

He was a British natural historian and author. As a child, he was interested in collecting insects, shells, minerals, fossils, and plants. In 1831, Forbes moved to London to study drawing but was not admitted by the Royal Academy. In 1832, he went to the University of Edinburgh to study medicine. He attended the natural history lectures, collected plants and animals, and became deeply involved in student affairs and scientific societies. In 1836, he abandoned medicine and took up natural history as his full-time occupation. Between 1833 and 1837, he travelled to Norway, France, Switzerland, Germany, and Algeria to study their natural histories. In 1838, Forbes published his first volume, “Malacologia Monensis,” a synopsis of the mollusk species native to the Isle of Man and in 1841, “A History of British Starfishes.” In 1841, he joined a Royal Navy surveying and archaeological expedition to the eastern Mediterranean. He returned to England in 1842, and financial pressures forced him to take the curatorship of the Museum of the Geological Society of London. In 1843, he also became a professor of botany at King's College London. In 1844, Forbes resigned the curatorship and became palaeontologist to the Geological Survey of Great Britain. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1845. In 1853, he became president of the Geological Society of London, and in 1854, he was appointed professor of natural history at the University of Edinburgh. A clubbable and humorous man, he had an active social life which revolved around several small dining societies of like-minded individuals, e.g., the Maga Club (Edinburgh), a Red Lions Club (Birmingham), and a Metropolitan Lions Club (London). Several of Forbes’ works were published posthumously, e.g., “On the Tertiary Fluviomarine Formation of the Isle of Wight“ (1856) and “The Natural History of the European Seas” (1859).

In 1848, he married Emily Marianne Ashworth (1825–1909). After contracting recurrent malaria in the Mediterranean, he died of kidney disease on November 18, 1854, in Edinburgh, Scotland.

James Forbes was born in London and went to Bombay in 1765 as a writer for the East India Company. He remained there until 1784. A draughtsman and keen observer, he filled 52,000 manuscript pages with notes on the natural history, archaeology, and religious and social life of India; these were later digested into his Oriental Memoirs, published between 1813 and 1815. Forbes was also the author of the 1810 "Reflections on the Character of the Hundus and the Necessity of Converting them to Christianity." After his return to England he married Rose Gaylard (1788), and spent considerable time travelling Europe.