Life and career: A.O. Hume was probably born at St Mary Cray, Kent, (some sources point to Montrose, Angus, Scotland as his birthplace), the son of Joseph Hume, the Radical MP. He was educated at Haileybury Training College and then University College Hospital, studying medicine and surgery. In 1849 he sailed to India and joined the Bengal Civil Service at Etawah in Uttar Pradesh. He soon rose to become District Officer, introducing free primary education and creating a local vernacular newspaper, 'Lokmitra'. He married Mary Ann Grindall in 1853. In 1867 he became Commissioner of Customs for the North West Province, and in 1870 became attached to the central government as Director-General of Agriculture. In 1879 he returned to provincial government at Allahabad.

Hume retired from the civil service in 1882. In 1883 he wrote an open letter to the graduates of Calcutta University, calling upon them to form their own national political movement. This led in 1885 to the first session of the Indian National Congress held in Bombay. Hume served as its General Secretary until 1908. Hume left India in 1894 and settled at Upper Norwood in London. He is buried in Brookward Cemetery.

Contribution to Ornithology

During his career in India he started with a systematic plan to survey and document the birds of the Indian Subcontinent and in the process he accumulated the largest collection of Asiatic birds in the world, housed in a museum and library at his home in Rothney Castle on Jakhu Hill, Shimla (Himachal Pradesh).

Hume used this vast bird collection to produce a publication on all the birds of India. This work was lost in 1885 when all his manuscripts were sold by a servant as waste paper. A landslip caused by heavy rains in Shimla damaged his personal museum and specimens. He wrote to the British Museum wishing to donate his collection on certain conditions, one of them being that the collection was to be examined by Dr. R. Bowdler Sharpe, apart from raising Dr. Sharpe's rank and salary. The British Museum was unable to heed to his conditions. It was only after the destruction of nearly 20000 specimens, that alarm bells were raised and the Museum authorities let Dr Sharpe visit India to supervise the transfer of the specimens to the British Museum.

The Hume collection as it went to the British museum in 1874 consisted of 82,000 specimens (258 types) of which 75,577 were placed in the Museum. A breakup of that collection is as follows (old names retained):

2830 Birds of Prey (Accipitriformes)… 8 types
1155 Owls (Strigiformes)…9 types
2819 Crows, Jays, Orioles etc…5 types
4493 Cuckoo-shrikes and Flycatchers… 21 types
4670 Thrushes and Warblers…28 types
3100 Bulbuls and wrens, Dippers, etc…16 types
7304 Timaliine birds…30 types
2119 Tits and Shrikes…9 types
1789 Sun-birds (Nectarinidae) and White-eyes (Zosteropidae)…8 types
3724 Swallows (Hirundiniidae), Wagtails and Pipits (Motacillidae)…8 types
2375 Finches (Fringillidae)…8 types
3766 Starlings (Sturnidae), Weaver-birds (Ploceidae), and larks (Alaudidae)…22 types
807  Ant-thrushes (Pittidae), Broadbills (Eurylaimidae)…4 types
1110 Hoopoes, Swifts (Cypseli), Nightjars & Frogmouths (Podargidae)… 8 types
2277 Picidae, Hornbills, Bee-eaters, Kingfishers, Rollers, Trogons…11 types
2339 Woodpeckers (Pici)…3 types
2417 Honey-guides (Indicatores), Barbets (Capiformes), and Cuckoos (Coccyges)…8 types
813  Parrots (Psittaciformes)…3 types
1615 Pigeons (Columbiformes)…5 types
2120 Sand-grouse (Pterocletes), Game-birds and Megapodes (Galliformes)…8 types
882  Rails (Ralliformes), Cranes (Gruiformes), Bustards (Otides)…6 types
1089 Ibises, Herons, Pelicans and Cormorants, Grebes (Podicipediformes)… 7 types
761  Geese and Ducks (Anseriformes)…2 types
15965 Eggs

Some of the species that were first described or discovered by Hume are as follows. The numbers are references to S. D. Ripley and Salim Ali's Synopsis and the old names are retained.

An additional species, the Large-billed Reed-Warbler (Acrocephalus orinus) known from just one specimen collected by him on his Sind expedition of 1871 is believed, on the basis of recent DNA studies, to be a proper species. However the bird has never been subsequently seen or collected.

Hume made several expeditions solely to study ornithology and in March 1873 he made one to the Andaman, Nicobar and other islands in the Bay of Bengal along with geologists Dr. Ferdinand Stoliczka and Dr. Dougall of the Geological Survey of India and James Wood-Mason of the Indian Museum in Calcutta. Hume employed William R. Davidson as a curator of his personal bird collection and also sent him out on collection trips to various parts of India, when he was held up with official responsibilities.

Hume had previously published several works, including Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds (1883) and Game Birds of India, Burma and Ceylon (1879, co-authored by C. H. T. Marshall). He also started the quarterly journal Stray Feathers - A journal of ornithology for India and dependencies in 1872. He used the journal to publish descriptions of his new discoveries, such as Hume's Owl, Hume's Wheatear and Hume's Whitethroat. He wrote extensively on his own observation as well as critical reviews of all the ornithological works of the time and earned himself the nickname of Pope of Indian ornithology.