Showing 71 results

Joan Beauchamp Procter was a British zoologist and herpetologist. She worked initially at the British Museum (Natural History) and later at the Zoological Society of London, as the first female Curator of Reptiles at London Zoo. She undertook substantial taxonomic work and made innovative contributions to veterinary practice and zoo displays. She wrote scientific and popular zoological articles, including early accounts of the behaviour of captive komodo dragons.

Pocock was born in Clifton, Bristol, the fourth son of Rev. Nicholas Pocock and Edith Prichard. He began showing interest in natural history at St Edward's School, Oxford. He received tutoring in zoology from Sir Edward Poulton, and was allowed to explore comparative anatomy at the Oxford Museum. He studies biology and geology at University College, Bristol. In 1885 he became an assistant at the Natural History Museum, and worked in the section of entomology for a year. He was put in charge of the collections of arachnida and myriapoda. He was also given the task to arrange the British bird collections, in the course of which he developed as lasting interest in ornithology. The 200 papers he published in his 18 years at the museum brought him recognition as an authority on arachnida and myriapoda; he described between 300 and 400 species of millipedes alone, and also described the scorpion genus Brachistosternus.

In 1904, he left to become Superintendent of London Zoo, remaining so until his retirement in 1923. He then worked as a voluntary researcher in the British Museum, in the mammals department.

He described the leopon in a 1912 to 'The Field', based on examination of a skin sent to him by W S Millard, the secretary of the Bombay Natural History Society.

Alfred Newton was an English zoologist and ornithologist. Newton was Professor of Comparative Anatomy at Cambridge University from 1866 to 1907. Among his numerous publications were a four-volume Dictionary of Birds (1893-6), entries on ornithology in the Encyclopædia Britannica (9th edition) while also an editor of the journal Ibis from 1865 to 1870. In 1900 he was awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society and the Gold Medal of the Linnaean Society. He founded the British Ornithologists Union

Wilhelm Engelhard Nathusius (from 1861 Wilhelm von Nathusius-Königsborn) was a wealthy Prussian land owning agriculturalist, industrialist, animal breeder and agronomist who also contributed to studies in zoology, particularly on the eggs of birds. An English translation of his work on eggshells was published by Cyril Tyler in 1964

Desmond John Morris is an English zoologist, ethologist and surrealist painter, as well as an author in human sociobiology. He is known for his 1967 book 'The Naked Ape' and for his television programmes such as 'Zoo TIme'.

Morris was born in Purton, Wiltshire, to Marjorie (nee Hunt) and children's fiction author Harry Morris. He was educated at Dauntsey's School, Wiltshire. In 1946 he joined the British Army for two years of national service, becoming a lecturer in fine arts at the Chiseldon Army College in Wiltshire. After being demobilised he studied zoology at the University of Birmingham. In 1951 he began a doctorate at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, in animal behaviour. In 1954 he earned a Doctor of Philosophy for his work on the reproductive behaviour of the ten-spined stickleback.

In 1956 he moved to London as Head of the Granada TV and Film Unit for the Zoological Society of London, and studies the picture-making abilities of apes. The work included creating programmes for film and television on animal behaviour and other zoology topics. He hosted Granada TV's weekly 'Zoo Time' programme until 1959, and 'Life in the Animal World' for BBC2. In 1957 he organised an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, showing paintings and drawings composed by common chimpanzees. In 1958 he co-organised an exhibition, 'The Lost Image', which compared pictures by infants, human adults and apes, at the Royal Festival Hall, London. In 1959 he left 'Zoo Time' to become the Zoological Society of London's Curator of Mammals. In 1964 he delivered the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on Animal Behaviour. In 1967 he spent a year as Executive Director of the London Institute of Contemporary Arts.

Morris's books include 'The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal' (1967). Morris moved to Malta in 1968 to write a sequel and other books. In 1973 he returned to Oxford to work for the ethologist Niko Tinbergen. From 1973 to 1981, Morris was a Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. In 1979 he undertook a television series for Thames TV, 'The Human Race', followed in 1982 by 'Man Watching in Japan, The Animals Road Show' in 1986 and then several other series. National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview (C1672/16) with Morris in 2015 for its Science and Religion collection held by the British Library.

Also known as Carl or Karl Eduard von Martens, he was a German zoologist. He attended university in Tübingen, where he graduated in 1855. He then moved to Berlin, where he would be based for the remainder of his career, both at the Zoological Museum of the Berlin University (from 1855) and, from 1859, at the Museum für Naturkunde. In 1860, he embarked on the Thetis expedition of the Prussian expedition to Eastern Asia. When the expedition returned to Europe in 1862, von Martens continued to travel around Maritime Southeast Asia for 15 months. He published the results of the Thetis expedition in two volumes, constituting the Zoologischer Theil of the "Preussische Expedition nach Ost-Asien." Vol. ii, consisting of 447 pages and 22 plates, contained a very full account of the land molluscs. Back in Berlin, von Martens was curator of the malacological and other invertebrate sections until his death. Von Martens described 155 new genera (150 of them molluscs) and almost 1,800 species (including around 1,680 molluscs, 39 crustaceans and 50 echinoderms.

He was a foreign member of the Linnean Society, and a corresponding member of the Zoological Society of London