Samuel Laing (1812–97)

Railway magnate, politician, and author. Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, 1834. Called to the bar, 1837. Secretary of the railway department of the Board of Trade, 1842. Chairman and managing director of the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway Company, 1848. Chairman of the Crystal Palace Company, 1852. Indian finance minister, 1860. Published popular accounts of science, anthropology, and human origins.