Edward Charles Buck

Sir Edward Charles Buck (1838 – 6 July 1916) was a British civil servant who served in the Indian Civil Service. He came to be known as the "Grand Old Man" of Indian agriculture.

Buck (standing extreme left) with the Marquess of Lansdowne (seated at centre), and other ICS officers, c. 1890

Buck was the son the organist and master of the choristers at Norwich Cathedral, Zechariah Buck. He went to school in Norwich and Oakham Schools followed by studies in law at Clare College, Cambridge receiving an LL.B. in 1862. He joined the Bengal Civil Service and served in the agricultural department of the Northwest Provinces from 1875 to 1880 and then became a secretary to the Revenue and Agricultural Department in 1882 (succeeding Allan Octavian Hume). He received an honorary LL.D. in 1886. He helped make the land revenue system more efficient and was knighted in 1886 and made KCSI in 1897. He was involved in nearly shutting down the Archaeological Survey of India.[1] Along with Lockwood Kipling and others he was involved in the promotion of arts including the use of photography for documentation.[2] He was keen outdoorsman and one of his hobbies was to "to plunge with a native hunter into a Himalayan forest, which he would penetrate before the dawn of day." For his work on agriculture in India, he came to be called the "Grand Old Man of Indian agriculture."[3] He retired in 1897 but served as a delegate to the International Agricultural Conference in Rome, 1905.[4] He died at Shimla.[5]