Matthew Forster Heddle was born on April 28, 1828, in Hoy, Orkney, Scotland.

He was a Scottish physician, educator, and mineralogist. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh (1845-1851) and he practised in Edinburgh for about 5 years. Then he studied chemistry and mineralogy at Klausthal and Freiburg, Germany. In the 1850s, together with Patrick Dudgeon, he participated in survey expeditions of the Faroe Islands, the Shetland Islands, and the Orkney Islands. In 1876, they co-founded the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain. He became assistant to Prof. Connell, who held the chair of chemistry at St. Andrews, and in 1862, he succeeded him as a professor, a position he held until 1880 when he was invited to report on gold mines in South Africa. On his return, he devoted himself to mineralogy and formed one of the finest personal collections of minerals. His specimens are now in the Royal Scottish Museum at Edinburgh. Heddle contributed many articles on Scottish minerals, and on the geology of the northern parts of Scotland, to the Mineralogical Magazine, as well as to the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 1876, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He was a keen amateur mountaineer and one of the first honorary members of the Scottish Mountaineering Club.

In 1858, he married Mary Jane Sinclair Mackechnie (1831–1891). He died on November 19, 1897, in St Andrews, Scotland.