Sibbald, SIR ROBERT, Scottish naturalist and antiquary, was born of Fifeshire ancestry at Edinburgh, 15th April 1641. Educated at Edinburgh, Leyden, and Paris, he settled in 1662 as a physician in Edinburgh, devoted much time to botany and zoology, and aided Sir Andrew Balfour in establishing a botanic garden. He was knighted in 1682 and appointed Geographer-royal for Scotland, in 1686 was for a short time a convert to Roman Catholicism, and died about 1722. He published many pamphlets on medical subjects, natural history, Scottish history, and antiquities.
His writings include Scotia Illustrata, sive Prodromus Historiæ Naturalis (1684); Collection of Several Treatises in Folio Concerning Scotland, as it was of Old, and also in Later Times (1707); A History of Fife and Kinross (1710); and his Autobiography (1833).