John Bennett Carruthers

John Bennett Carruthers FRSE, FLS (19 January 1869 – 17 July 1910) was a British agriculturalist. He served as Director of Agriculture and as Government Botanist in the Federated Malay States at the beginning of the twentieth century during the era of rapid growth of the rubber industry in the Malay Peninsula.

Career John Bennett Caruthers, began his career as Demonstrator of Botany at Royal Veterinary College of Great Britain, before becoming Professor of Botany at Downtown College of Agriculture, and then assistant Consulting Botanist at the Royal Agricultural Society of England.

In 1900, he went to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) having accepted the position of Assistant Director and Mycologist at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Peradeniya investigating, in particular, the cultivation of tea and rubber, and was promoted to Director in 1902, having previously been sent out from England to Ceylon in 1897 for a year to investigate cacao disease. He died in Trinidad due to a lung abscess on 17 July 1910, aged 41.