Henry Gascoyne Maurice was President of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea 1920-1938 and President of the Zoological Society of London 1942-1948. He also headed the Fisheries Department of the Ministry of Agriculture from 1912 and was Fisheries Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries from 1920 until his retirement in 1938, after which he served on the White Fish Commission from its inception in 1938 until its suspension on the outbreak of the Second World War.
Nicholas Avrion Mitchison is a British zoologist and immunologist. He was President of the Zoological Society of London 1989-1992
Richard William Alan Onslow, 5th Earl of Onslow, styled Viscount Cranley until 1911, was a British peer, diplomat, parliamentary secretary and government minister. He was President of the Zoological Society of London from 1936 to 1942.
Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne, known as Lord Henry Petty from 1784-1809. He was the son of Prime Minister William Petty, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne (known as the Earl of Shelburne) by his second marriage to Lady Louisa, daughter of John FitzPatrick, 1st Earl of Upper Ossory. He was educated at Westminster School, the University of Edinburgh and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a British Statesman and served as Home Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer and was three times Lord President of the Council.
He was President of the Zoological Society of London 1827-1831.
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was a member of the British royal family as the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. He was President of the Zoological Society of London for two decades and was appointed an honorary fellow in 1977.
Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles was born in 1781 on board the ship Ann, off the coast of Port Morant, Jamaica, to Captain Benjamin Raffles and Anne Raffles (nee Lyde). Raffles was a British statesman, Lieutenant-Governor of the Dutch East Indies (1811-1816), and Lieutenant-Governor of Bencoolen (1818-1824). He was the founder of modern Singapore and the Straits Settlements. Raffles was heavily involved in the capture of the Indonesian island of Java from the Dutch during the Napoleonic Wars. He wrote 'The History of Java'.
He was elected a member of the Linnaean Society on 5th February 1825. He was a founder and first president of the Zoological Society of London and the London Zoo.
Raffles died at Highwood House in Mill Hill, north London, on 5th July 1826, of apoplexy. He was survived by his second wife Sophia Hull and daughter Ella.
Herbrand Arthur Russell, 11th Duke of Bedford, was and English politician and peer. He was the son of Francis Russell, 9th Duke of Bedford, and his wife Lady Elizabeth Sackville-West, daughter of George Sackville-West, 5th Earl De La Warr.
He was President of the Zoological Society of London from 1899 to 1936, and was concerned with animal preservation throughout his life. He was instrumental in saving the milu (or Pere David's deer), which was already extinct by 1900 in its native China. He acquired a few remaining deer from European zoos and nurtured a herd of them at Woburn Abbey. He gifted Himalayan tahr to the New Zealand government in 1903.
Edward Smith-Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby was a politician, peer, landowner, builder, farmer, art collector and naturalist. He was the patron of the writer Edward Lear.
In 1834 he succeeded his father as 13th Earl of Derby and withdrew from politics, instead concentrating on his natural history collection at Knowsley Hall, near Liverpool. He had a large collection of living animals; at his death there were 1,272 birds and 345 mammals at Knowsley, shipped to England by explorers such as Joseph Burke. From 1828 to 1833 he was President of the Linnean Society. Several species were named after him. He was President of the Zoological Society 1831-1851.
Sir Arthur Landsborough Thomson was a Scottish medical researcher, amateur ornithologist, ornithological author and expert on bird migration. He was President of the British Ornithologists' Union from 1848-1955. He was President of the Zoological Society of London 1946-1950. He was Chairman of the British Trust for Ornithology 1941-1947 and won the Trust's Bernard Tucker Medal in 1957. In 1959 he was awarded the Godman-Salvin Medal.
Colonel Arthur Hay, 9th Marquess of Tweeddale, known before 1862 as Lord Arthur Hay and between 1862 and 1876 as Viscount Walden, was a Scottish solider and ornithologist. He was President of the Zoological Society of London from 1868 . He had a private collection of birds, insects, reptiles and mammals, and employed Carl Bock to travel to Maritime Southeast Asia and collect specimens. Tweeddale described about 40 species collected by Bock for the first time and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1871.