Showing 28 results

Authority record
ZSL Secretary
Neave, Sheffield Airey
Person · 1879-1961

Neave was a British naturalist and entomologist. He was the grandson of Sheffield Neave, a governor of the Bank of England and the father of Airey Neave. He was born in Kensworth, Hertfordshire, the son of Sheffield Henry M. Neave and his wife Gertrude Charlotte Margaret (nee Airey). He was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford.

Neave's first work was research into the problems related to the tsetse fly and the study of African animal life. He was part of the Geodetic Survey of Northern Rhodesia between 1904 and 1905. Between 1906 and 1908 he was part of the Katanga Sleeping Sickness Commission and then from 1909 to 1913 the Entomological Research Committee of Tropical Africa.

He returned to the United Kingdom in 1913 and was appointed Assistant Director of the Imperial Institute of Entomology, becoming Director from 1942-1946. He was appointed as an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1933 and a companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George in 1941. From 1918 until 1933 he was Honorary Secretary of the Royal Entomological Society and was then its President in 1934-1935.

In 1934 he had the idea to compile an updated index of all published generic and subgeneric names in zoology, an activity which occupied the period 1935-1939, and resulted in the publication of his (initially) four volume 'Nomenclator Zoologicus' in 1939-1940. He also oversaw the preparation of a fifth volume, published in 1950.

Neave was Secretary of the Zoological Society of London from 1942. He retired in 1946 but carried on as Honorary Secretary until 1952.

Naeve married twice, firstly to Dorothy Middleton and they had two sons and three daughters, the eldest was Airey Neave, later a Member of Parliament. Dorothy died in 1942 and Neave married a second time to Mary Hodges in London in 1946.
Mitchell, Peter Chalmers
Mitchell, Peter Chalmers
Person · 1864-1945

Mitchell was the son of Rev. Alexander Mitchell, a Presbyterian minister in Dunfermline, Scotland, and Marion Chalmers. He gained his MA at the University of Aberdeen, and then went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he read natural sciences, specialising in zoology. After his honours examination in 1888, he was appointed University Demonstrator in Zoology.

In 1911 he delivered the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on 'The Childhood of Animals'.

In 1896 he was the anonymous author of an article in the Saturday Review entitled 'A Biological View of English Foreign Policy', which proposed the inevitability of a final battle between Britain and Germany, in which one would be destroyed. In February 1915 He gave three lectures on the subject of evolution and foreign policy at the Royal Institution that expanded on his 1896 article. These were combined and published in the form of a book entitled 'Evolution and the War' in May 1915. In April 1916, now an Army Captain, he was made responsible for setting up a specialist department MI7(B)4 to oversee the production of military propaganda to be dropped from the air over enemy lines.

He was Secretary of the Zoological Society of London from 1903-1935, second in length of office to his predecessor Philip Lutley Sclater. Mitchell's brainchild, Whipsnade Zoo, was opened in 1931 on the Dunstable Downs, Bedfordshire. In 1933 he was one of eleven people involved in the appeal which led to the foundation of the British Trust for Ornithology.

On retiring, he moved to Malaga, staying there during the first six months or so of the Spanish Civil War, until the city was taken on behalf of the rebels by Italian troops. An account of his last days in Malaga, including his arrest along with Arthur Koestler, is included in Koestler's book 'Spanish Testament' and in his own memoir 'My House in Malaga', published in 1938.

Mitchell died on 2nd July 1945 after being injured in an accident on 29th June outside London Zoo. After stepping off a bus, he was struck by a taxicab. A species of South American worm lizard, Amphisbaena mitchelli, is named in his honour. He also proved in the treatise 'On the Intestinal Tract of Mammals' that the caecum of mammals is directly homologous with the paired caeca of birds.
Mitchell, David William
Mitchell, David William
Person · 1813-1859

Mitchell was born in Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire. He graduated from Christ Church, Oxford in 1836.

He illustrated George Robert Gray's 'Genera of Birds', but finding himself too busy with his work for the Zoological Society of London, he employed the German illustrator Joseph Wolf as his assistant on the project.

Mitchell was elected into the Linnean Society in November 1843. He was the first paid secretary of the Zoological Society of London, taking up the post between 10th February 1847 and 6th April 1859, instigating the construction of the first public marine aquarium in the Zoological Gardens, which opened on 22nd May 1853. He was credited with rescuing the zoo financially by publishing attractive images of a few 'star' animals, thus greatly increasing the number of visitors in the late 1840s. He was also a collector and dealer in skins and eggs.

He resigned his post as Secretary of the Zoological Society of London on 6th April 1859, and he became the Aquarium Director of the Jardin d'Acclimatation in Paris, but died on 1st November 1859 after his shot himself only months after taking up the position.

He married Prudence Philips Willes, daughter of Rev Edward Willes of Walcot, near Bath on 30th October 1837.
Laws, Richard Maitland
Person · 1926-2014

Laws was born in Whitley Bay, Northumberland and educated at Dame Allan's School, Newcastle upon Tyne, and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he was an Open Scholar.

He started his career as a zoologist on the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey in 1947, where he investigated the ecology of elephant seals in the South Orkney Islands and South Georgia. These formed the subject of his 1953 Cambridge PhD. After spending a season as a whaling inspector, he joined the National Institute of Oceanography 1955-1961 where he studies great whales and elephant seals.

Outside Antartica, he was also an expert on large African mammals. In 1960 he was appointed Director of the Nuffield Unit of Tropical Animal Ecology in Uganda. Over the next eight years his research focused on hippopotamus and elephant ecology. He spent a year as Director of the Tsavo Research Project in Kenya 1967-1968.

He returned to Cambridge in 1968 to resume his Antarctic research. In 1969 he became Head of the Life Sciences Division of the British Antarctic Survey. He became Director in 1973, a post he held until retirement in May 1987. He was Secretary of the Zoological Society of London 1984-1988. He was Master of St Edmund's College, Cambridge 1985-1996, and he was a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission.

In 1954 Laws won the Bruce Memorial Prize for his work on the ecology of elephant seals. He was awarded the Polar Medal in 1975. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1980, and was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire. In 1991 he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science degree by the University of Bath.

On his retirement, a fund was established for a prize to be awarded in recognition of the achievements of outstanding young scientists of the British Antarctic Survey. The Laws Prize continues to be awarded annually.
Huxley, Julian Sorell
Huxley, Julian Sorell
Person · 1887-1975

Huxley was an English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection and a leading figure in mid-twentieth century modern synthesis. He was Secretary of the Zoological Society of London 1935-1942, the first Director of UNESCO, a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund, the President of the British Eugenics Society 1959-1962, and the first President of the British Humanist Association.

He was well known for his presentation of science in books and articles, and on radio and television. He directed an Oscar winning wildlife film. He was awarded UNESCO's Kalinga Prize for the popularisation of science in 1953, the Darwin Medal of the Royal Society in 1956, and the Darwin-Wallace Medal of the Linnaean Society on 1958. He was knighted in 1958. In 1959 he received a Special Award of the Lasker Foundation in the category Planned Parenthood - World Population.

In 1935 Huxley was appointed Secretary to the Zoological Society of London, and spent much of the next seven years running the society and its zoological gardens, London Zoo and Whipsnade Park, alongside his writing and research. Huxley introduced a range of ideas for making the Zoo child friendly. He fenced off the Fellow's Lawn to establish Pets Corner, appointed new assistant curators who he encouraged to talk to children, and he initiated the Zoo Magazine.
Hedley, Ronald Henderson
Person · 1928-2006

Hedley was a British zoologist. He was born in 1928 to Henry Armstrong Hedley and Margaret Hopper. He was educated at Durham Johnston School, followed by King's College at Durham University (now Newcastle University) where he obtained a Bachelor's degree in Zoology and a PhD in 1953.

He was first employed at the Natural History Museum in 1955. In 1971 he was appointed Deputy Director of the museum and in 1976 became Director of the museum. In 1988 he retired from the Natural History Museum.

From 1977 to 1980, Hedley was the Honorary Secretary of the Zoological Society of London.

Hedley married Valmai Mary Griffith in 1957 and they had one son. He died aged 77 on 11th July 2006.
Harvey, Paul H
Person · 1947-

Paul H Harvey is a British evolutionary biologist. He is Professor of Zoology and was Head of the Zoology Department at the University of Oxford from 1998 to 2011 and Secretary of the Zoological Society of London from 2000-2011, holding these posts in conjunction with a professional fellowship at Jesus College, Oxford.

He was educated at the University of York, where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science and a Doctor of Philosophy degree.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1992. He was awarded the Scientific Medal and the Frink Award from the Zoological Society of London, the J. Murray Luck Award from the National Academy of Sciences, and the University of Helsinki Medal. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2008.
Cross, Barry Albert
Person · 1925-1994

Sir Barry Albert Cross was a British biologist. He was a Fellow of Corpus Christ College, Cambridge. He was Secretary of the Zoological Society of London 1988-1992. He was knighted in 1989.