Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Coppinger, Richard William
COPPINGER, RICHARD WILLIAM (1847–1910), naval surgeon and naturalist, born on 11 Oct. 1847 in Dublin, was youngest of the six sons of Joseph William Coppinger, a solicitor of Farmley, Dundrum, co. Dublin, by his wife Agnes Mary, only daughter of William Lalor Cooke, landed proprietor of Fortwilliam, co. Tipperary. The father's family was long settled at Ballyvolane and Barryscourt, co. Cork, and was said to descend from the first Danish settlers in Cork city. Coppinger received his medical education in Dublin, graduating M.D. at the Queen's University in 1870. Entering the medical department of the navy, he was appointed surgeon to H.M.S. Alert, which, with H.M.S. Discovery, left Portsmouth on 29 May 1875 under the command of captain, (afterwards Sir) George S. Nares on a voyage of exploration towards the North Pole. The Alert reached a higher latitude than had ever been touched before, and Coppinger distinguished himself as the naturalist in charge of one of the sledging parties. On the return of the Alert to England in October 1876 he was specially promoted staff-surgeon and awarded the Arctic medal. Coppinger again served as naturalist in the Alert on her four years' exploring cruise in Patagonian, Polynesian and Mascarene waters from 1878 to 1882.
In 1889 he was appointed instructor in hygiene at the Haslar naval hospital at Gosport, where he was a most successful teacher, his knowledge of bacteriology being in advance of the time. On 13 March 1901 he was appointed inspector-general of hospitals and fleets, and was for three years in charge at Haslar. On 15 May 1904 he was placed on half-pay, and being disappointed in not being made director-general of the medical department of the navy, he retired in 1906.
He died at his residence, Wallington House, Fareham, on 2 April 1910, and was buried at Fareham cemetery. He married, on 8 Jan. 1884, Matilda Mary, daughter of Thomas Harvey Browne, landed proprietor of Sydney, N.S.W., and had issue three sons and one daughter.
Coppinger was author of 'The Cruise of the Alert, 1878-82' (1883). He also wrote 'Some Experiments on the Conductive Properties of Ice made in Discovery Bay, 1875-6 ' (Proc. Roy. Soc. 1878, xxvi.); and 'Account of the Zoological Collections made in the Years 1878-1881, during the Survey of H.M.S. Alert in the Straits of Magellan and the Coast of Patagonia' (Proc. Zoolog. Soc., 1881). He contributed to the parliamentary paper containing the report of the committee (1877) on 'Scurvy in the Arctic Expedition, 1875-6,' and to the 'Report on the Zoological Collections of H.M.S. Alert made in 1881-2' (British Museum, Nat. Hist., 1884).
[Brit. Med. Journ., 1910, i. 1090; private information.]