Raymond de Candolle

Raymond Charles Pyramus de Candolle (24 August 1864 – 25 January 1935) was a British railway engineer and a Major General in the British Army. After graduating in engineering at the University of Cambridge in 1886, he joined James Livesey & Son (railway engineering contractors) and undertook railway building assignments in Mexico, Spain, China and Argentina, where he became Director of the Buenos Aires Great Southern Railways (BAGS) in 1907. During the First World War he was recruited as Brigadier-General and was sent to Romania, Russia and Anatolia on a series of railway-related missions. Later, he was sent to Russia again in 1917 to sort out the Trans-Siberian Railway. He belonged to a prominent family from Geneva, Switzerland, and was a great-grandson of the botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle and the physician Alexander Marcet.

After graduation, Candolle traveled to the United States, then to Mexico, where he was put to work modernizing railroads. As Brigadier-General, in 1916 Candolle headed the railway mission to Romania to fix the narrow-gauge railway line across Bessarabia from Odessa.

He was ordered to Russia in July 1917 with intent to assist work on the Trans-Siberian Railway He believed that "co-operation with the Bolsheviks was the best means of serving the allied cause", and assisted in diplomatic efforts with R. H. Bruce Lockhart.

Later life Candolle was appointed to a number of League of Nations committees dealing with the development of international transportation. He was a key spokesman in the Permanent Committee for transport by Rail, and became involved with railway disputes in Czechoslovakia and opium production in Persia. His most active participation eventually centred around the development of transport by container.

He remained secretive and modest about his interventions. When asked by Ian Fleming to talk about his career, he responded: "I am only mysterious because I am not famous enough to be talked about. My ancestors did mysterious things with plants, and everybody talked about them. A little bit like a child, I decided to build railways, and it also proved to be quite exciting."

Raymond de Candolle C.B., C.E., died on 25 January 1935, aged 71, at the Almonds Hotel, London.