Showing 71 results

Authority record
Forbes, William Alexander
Person · 1855-1883

William Alexander Forbes was an English zoologist. He was the son of James Staats Forbes. He studied natural sciences at St John's College, Cambridge, and later taught at Rhodes College.

In 1879 he was appointed prosector to the Zoological Society of London. Forbes lectured on comparative anatomy at Charing Cross Hospital Medical School. As an anatomist he wrote papers on the muscular and voice organs of birds.

On 8 February 1878, Forbes was elected Secretary of the Cambridge Natural History Society. He also edited the book compiling the late Alfred Henry Garrod's scientific papers. The book was published in 1881 along with a memoir of Garrod written by Forbes.

In 1880 Forbes visited the forests of Pernambuco, Brazil, and published an account of his trip in The Ibis in 1881. In 1882 he travelled to West Africa to study the native fauna, starting from the mouth of the Niger delta. He was taken ill shortly after Christmas and died in Shonga.

Forbes is commemorated in the names of the Forbes's blackbird, Anumara forbesi, white-collared kite, Leptodon forbesi, and the Forbes's plover Charadrius forbesi.

Ewart, James Cossar
Person · 1851-1933

James Cossar Ewart was a Scottish zoologist. He performed breeding experiments with horses and zebras which disproved earlier theories of heredity. He studied medicine from 1871 to 1874 at the University of Medicine. After graduation, he became an anatomy demonstrator under William Turner and then held the position of Curator of the Zoological Museum at University College, London, where he assisted Ray Lankester (later director of the Natural History Museum) by making zoological preparations for the museum and providing teaching support for Lankester's course in practical zoology. In 1878 he returned to Scotland to take a post of Regius Professor of Natural History at the University of Aberdeen from where he moved to the University of Edinburgh in 1882, staying in the post until 1927.

Elliot, Daniel Giraud
Person · 1835-1915

Daniel Giraud Elliot was an American zoologist. He used his wealth to publish a series of colour-plate books on birds and animals. Elliot wrote the text himself and commissioned artists such as Joseph Wolf and Joseph Smit, both of whom had worked for John Gould, to provide the illustrations. The books included A Monograph of the Phasianidae (Family of the Pheasants) (1870–72), A Monograph of the Paradiseidae or Birds of Paradise (1873),[3] A Monograph of the Felidae or Family of Cats (1878) and Review of the Primates (1913). In 1899 he was invited to join the Harriman Alaska Expedition to study and document wildlife along the Alaskan coast. Elliot was one of the founders of the American Museum on Natural History in New York City, of the American Ornithologists' Union and of the Société zoologique de France. He was also curator of zoology at the Field Museum in Chicago

Person · 1795-1876

Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg was a German naturalist, zoologist, comparative anatomist, geologist and microscopist.

Edwards, Alphonse Milne-
Person · 1835-1900

Alphonse Milne-Edwards was a French mammalogist, ornithologist and carcinologist. He was the son of Henri Milne-Edwards. Milne-Edwards obtained a medical degree in 1859 and became assistant to his father at the Jardin des Plantes in 1876. He became the director of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in 1891, devoting himself especially to fossil birds and deep-sea exploration. In 1881 he undertook a survey of the Gulf of Gascony with Léopold de Folin and worked aboard the Travailleur and the Talisman on trips to the Canary Islands, the Cape Verde Islands, and the Azores. For this, he received a gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society

Dohrn, Felix Anton
Person · 1840-1909

Felix Anton Dohrn was a prominent German Darwinist and the founder and first director of the first zoological research station in the world, the Stazione Zoologica in Naples, Italy.

Cuvier, Georges, Baron
Person · 1769-1832

A French naturalist and zoologist, sometimes referred to as the 'founding father of palaeontology'. Cuvier was a major figure in natural sciences research in the early 19th century and was instrumental in establishing the fields of comparative anatomy and palaeontology through his work in comparing living animals with fossils

Chaillu, Paul Belloni du
Person · 1835-1903

Paul Belloni Du Chaillu was a French-American traveller, zoologist and anthropologist. He became famous in the 1860s as the first modern European to confirm the existence of gorillas

Cansdale, George Soper
Person · 1909-1993

George Soper Cansdale was born in Brentwood, Essex and attended Brentwood School before studying for a degree in forestry at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He then joined the Colonial Service, and in 1934 was appointed as Forestry Officer for the Gold Coast (now Ghana), where he started collecting animals for a friend who worked at Paignton Zoo. He used local children to help him collect specimens, and as a result discovered several new species. He began supplying animals for several zoos, including London Zoo.

In 1947 he was recruited by the Zoological Society of London as their Superintendent, a post which he held until 1953. During that period he began to broadcast for the BBC, on early wildlife programmes such as 'Heads, Tails and Feet', 'Looking at Animals' and 'All About Animals', the latter two of which won the Royal Television Society's silver medal in 1952. He also made regular appearances on Children's Hour on BBC radio. From the 1960s onwards he was a regular guest on Blue Peter.

In the 1960s Cansdale became Director of Marine Land in Morecambe, Chessington Zoo and Natureland in Skegness. He also developed, with his son, a method of obtaining clean seawater by filtering it through beach sand, and set up a company, SWF Filtration Ltd, which won the international IBM Award for Sustainable Development in 1990.

His books included 'Animals in West Africa' (1946), 'Animals and Man' (1952), 'George Cansdale's Zoo Book' (1953), 'Belinda and the Bushbaby' (written with his wife, 1953), 'Reptiles of West Africa' (1955), 'The Ladybird Book of British Wild Animals' (1958), 'West African Snakes' (1961), 'Behind the Scenes at a Zoo (1965) and 'Animals of Bible Lands' (1965).

Cambridge, Octavius Pickard
Person · 1828-1917

Octavius Pickard-Cambridge was an English clergyman and zoologist. His main interest was in spiders, though he wrote also on birds and lepidoptera. He published extensively on spiders between 1859 and his death in 1917, including in the the journal of the Zoological Society of London. He became a world authority of spiders, describing a considerable number of new species including the Costa Rican redleg tarantula and the Sydney funnel-web spider