Showing 37 results

Authority record
Naturalist
Durrell, Gerald Malcolm
Person · 1925-1995

Gerald Malcom Durrell was a British naturalist, writer, zookeeper, conservationist and television presenter. He founded the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Jersey Zoo in 1959. He wrote approximately forty books, mainly about his life as an animal collector and enthusiast, the most famous being My Family and Other Animals (1956). After the war. Durrell joined Whipsnade Zoo as a junior or student keeper
Fisher, James Maxwell McConnell
Person · 1912-1970

James Maxwell McConnell Fisher was a British author, editor, broadcaster, naturalist and ornithologist. He was an authority of Gilbert White and made over 1,000 radio and television broadcasts on natural history subjects.

Fisher was the son of Kenneth Fisher (also a keen ornithologist and headmaster of Oundle School from 1922 to 1945); his maternal uncle was the Cheshire naturalist Arnold Boyd. He was educated at Eton and began studying medicine at Magdalen College, Oxford, but later switched to zoology. He took part in the Oxford Arctic expedition in 1933 as an ornithologist.

After university he joined London Zoo as an Assistant Curator, and during the war studied rooks for the Ministry of Agriculture. He later became a leading member of the RSPB and IUCN, a member of the National Parks Commission and vice-chairman of the Countryside Commission. He presented the BBC Radio series Birds in Britain from its inception in March 1951 until its end, twelve years later. Fisher was one of the members of the small party that on 18th September 1955 raised the Union Flag and took possession for the UK of the tiny, uninhabited, rock islet of Rockall in the North Atlantic. As well as writing his own books, he was an editor of Collins' New Naturalist series. He was the resident ornithologist in the regular Nature Parliament series broadcast in the 1950s on BBC radio as part of Children's House. He was awarded the British Trust for Ornithology's Bernard Tucker Medal in 1966.

He was married to Margery Lilian Edith Turner, and they had six children, including the publisher Edmund Fisher. He died in a car crash in September 1970. After Fisher's death he was commemorated in two ways. A public appeal allowed the seabird island of Copinsay, Orkney, to be purchased as a permanent nature reserve dedicated to his name. Also, his papers were subsequently purchased by Bruce Coleman and John Burton and presented to The National Archives
Goering, Christian Anton
Goering, Christian Anton
Person · 1836-1905

Christian Anton Goering was a German naturalist, painter and graphic artist who spent several years in Venezuela. He learned taxidermy from his father, who was a member of several ornithological societies. It was at a meeting of one of these societies that he met Christian Ludwig Brehm who helped him obtain a position at the Ornithological Museum of the University of Halle, where he worked under the direction of Hermann Burmeister. From 1856 to 1858, they travelled in South America and he decided to pursue his interests in natural history. He also went to London, where he took lessons from the zoological artist Joseph Wolf. While he was there, the Secretary of the Zoological Society, Philip Lutley Sclater, asked him to go to Venezuela to collect specimens for the British Museum
Gray, John Edward
Gray, John Edward
Person · 1800-1875

John Edward Gray was a British zoologist. He was the elder brother of zoologist George Robert Gray and son of the pharmacologist and botanist Samuel Frederick Gray. Gray was keeper of zoology at the British Museum from 1840 until 1874, before the natural history holdings were split off to the Natural History Museum. He published several catalogues of the museum collections that included discussions of animal groups and descriptions of new species
Hodgson, Brian Houghton
Hodgson, Brian Houghton
Person · 1800-1894

Brian Houghton Hodgson is widely recognised for the great progress he made in describing the birds and mammals of Nepal. He wrote more than 140 zoological papers, ranging from descriptions of single species to checklists of the fauna, and presented ZSL with his manuscript notes and drawings
Hudson, William Henry
Hudson, William Henry
Person · 1841-1922

William Henry Hudson (known in Argentina as Guillermo Enrique Hudson) was an Anglo-Argentine author, naturalist and ornithologist. Hudson spent his youth studying the local flora and fauna in Argentina while publishing his ornithological work in the Proceedings of the Royal Zoological Society. He produced a series of ornithological studies, including Argentine Ornithology (1888-1899) and British Birds (1895)
Jackson, Frederick John
Jackson, Frederick John
Person · 1860-1929

Sir Frederick John Jackson was an English administrator, explorer and ornithologist. Jackson joined the British Ornithologists' Union in 1888. That year a paper by Jackson and Captain Shelley was published describing birds collected during his 1884-1886 trip to Africa. He collected many specimens in an 1898-1891 expedition to Uganda, and descriptions of this collection were published in a five-part paper in the Ibis in 1891-1892. Other papers described new species appeared in the Ibis and other journals between 1890 and 1917. Jackson was elected President of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society in 1910. He wrote nine of the nineteen chapters of Big Game Shooting, published in 1894. After retiring he worked on a complete history of the Birds of East Africa and Uganda, which was unpublished when he died in 1929, following pneumonia. The Birds of Kenya Colony and the Uganda Protectorate was completed by William Lutley Sclater
Knight, Maxwell
Person · 1887-1968

Charles Henry Maxwell Knight was a British spymaster, naturalist and broadcaster, reputedly a model for the James Bond character 'M'. He played major roles in surveillance of an early British Fascist party as well as the main Communist Party. He penned numerous books about natural history and animals. After his death, the Maxwell Knight Memorial Fund was set up, which provided for the Maxwell Knight Young Naturalists' Library in the education centre of the Natural History Museum. After Knight's death, a wildlife memorial fund was established in his name, headed by David Attenborough and Peter Scott