Cuthbert Collingwood was born on December 25, 1826, probably at Christchurch, Hampshire, England.

He was an English naturalist, physician, and scientific writer. He attended King's College School and Christ Church College at Oxford where he graduated with a B.A. degree in 1849, proceeding to an M.A. degree in 1852 and an M.B. degree in 1854. He subsequently studied at Edinburgh University and spent some time in the medical schools of Paris and Vienna. From 1858 to 1866 he held the appointment of lecturer on botany at the Liverpool Royal Infirmary School of Medicine. He was elected Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1853 and he served on its council in 1868. He also lectured on biology at the Liverpool School of Science. From 1866 to 1867 he served as surgeon and naturalist on HMS Rifleman and HMS Serpent on voyages in the China Seas and made researches in marine zoology. He became the senior physician of the Northern Hospital in Liverpool and took part in the intellectual life of the city. In 1876, he travelled to Palestine and Egypt. In the later years of his life, he lived in Paris but returned to England in 1907. In 1865, Collingwood published “Twenty-one Essays on Various Subjects, Scientific and Literary”, and he wrote on his expeditions in “Rambles of a Naturalist on the Shores and Waters of the China Seas” (1868). He wrote also “The Travelling Birds” (1872), and forty papers on natural history in scientific periodicals. Collingwood was a prominent member of the New Jerusalem Church. He published expositions of his religious beliefs, including “A Vision of Creation” (1872), a poem with a geological introduction; “New Studies in Christian Theology” (anon. 1883), and “The Bible and the Age, Principles of Consistent Interpretation” (1886).

He married Clara Mowbray (d. 1871). He died on October 20, 1908, in Lewisham, England.