William Ruxton Davison was a British ornithologist and collector. Davison was born in Burma but grew up mainly in Ootacamund in southern India. He worked as a private collector and museum curator for Allan Octavian Hume before taking up a position in 1887 as the first director of Raffles Museum in Singapore. He is thought to have committed suicide by opium overdose.

Allan Octavian Hume, CB ICS was a British political reformer, ornithologist, civil servant and botanist who worked in British India, who founded the party Indian National Congress. He supported the idea of self-governance by Indians. A notable ornithologist, Hume has been called "the Father of Indian Ornithology" and, by those who found him dogmatic, "the Pope of Indian Ornithology".