Zoologist, Acting Superintendent of the Gardens and Secretary to the Garden Committee of the Zoological Society of London (appointed 1902)
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.
Yarrell was born in Duke Street, St James's in London, to Francis Yarrell and his wife Sarah (nee Blane). His father and uncle ran a newspaper agency and bookshop. He was educated at Dr Nicholson's School in Ealing. In 1802 he became a clerk with the Herries, Farquhar and Co. Bank. In 1803 he and his cousin, Edward Jones, joined his father's business. He acquired the reputation of being the best shot and best angler in London, soon becoming an expert naturalist. He sent many bird specimens to Thomas Bewick, who engraved them as woodcuts.
He joined the Royal Institution in 1817. His first publication was 'On the Occurrence of some Rare British Birds' (1825). This was published in the second volume of the 'Zoological Journal' and he later became one of that journal's editors. He was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1825. He wrote in 1827 on the structure of the tracheae of birds and on plumage changes in pheasants. He corresponded and shared specimens with other naturalists including Thomas Bewick, Sir William Jardine, Prideaux John Selby, Nicholas Aylward Vigors and Jonathan Couch.
Yarrell was one of the original members of the Zoological Society of London. In 1833, he was a founder of what became the Royal Entomological Society of London. He served for many years as treasurer both of the Entomological Society and the Linnean Society. Yarrell's major works were 'A History of British Fishes' (1836) and 'A History of British Birds (1843).
Yarrell died during a trip to Great Yarmouth and a memorial was erected in St James's Church, Piccadilly. He was buried in the churchyard of St Mary's in Bayford, Hertfordshire.
Yarrell had a number of species names after him, including the birds yellow-faced siskin (Carduelis yarrelli), the Chilean woodstar (Eulidia yarrelli) and the fish Yarrell's blenny (Chirolophis ascanii). The British subspecies of the white wagtail, the pied wagtail (Motacilla alba yarrelli) was also named after him.
Barlow was born in South Mimms, Hertfordshire, to his father Thomas WIlliam, a Clerk. He was educated at Blundell's School, after which in 1816 he started attending Trinity College, Cambridge. He earned his BA in 1820 and his MA in 1823. In 1822 he became the curate of the parish of Uckfield, Sussex. On 23rd March 1823 he was ordained as a priest. From 1830-1843 he was rector to the parish in Little Bowden, Northamptonshire. In 1824 he married Cecilia Anne Lam.
In 1832 Barlow joined the Royal Institution of Great Britain and he would serve many positions including Manager (1838), Secretary of the Lectures Committee (1841) and Honorary Secretary (1843-1860. Barlow was elected into the Royal Society in 1834 and served as Secretary of the Zoological Society of London from 1837-1838.
In 1851 Barlow became minister of the Duke Street Chapel, London and from 1854-1859 he was Chaplain-in-Ordinary at Kensington Palace.
Son of Philip Lutley Sclater and Jane Anne Eliza, the daughter of Sir David Hunter-Blair. He received his Master of Arts degree in Natural Science from Keble College, Oxford in 1885. He worked for two years as a Demonstrator at Cambridge and went on a collecting trip to British Guiana in 1886. He published about birds in the Ibis in 1887. In the same year he received an appointment as a deputy superintendent of the Indian Museum in Calcutta until 1891 when he joined the science faculty of Eton College. Sclater then took up the position of curator at the South African Museum, During his time in South Africa he continued his scientific writings, including the completion of the work 'Flora and Fauna of South Africa. In 1906, following a dispute with the Museum's board of trustees, Sclater resigned as curator. He travelled through Mombasa, Lake Victoria, Khartoum and Cairo before returning to England. He then moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado, which had been founded by his wife's brother-in-law, General William Jackson Palmer. Palmer offered Sclater a small estate outside the city and a professorship at Colorado College where he helped in reorganising the museum. When the general died in 1909, the couple returned to England.
From 1909 Sclater became curator of the Bird Room at the Natural History Museum. While working there he compiled the 'Systema Avium Aethiopicarum' (1924-1930). He worked there until his death.
In 1912 Sclater published 'A History of the Birds of Colorado' in two volumes. During World War One he volunteered for the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families Association.
Sclater was editor of 'Ibis' from 1913-1930, editor of the Zoological Record from 1921-1937, President of the British Ornithologist's Union from 1928-1933, and Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society 1931-1943. In 1930 he was awarded the Godman-Salvin God Medal. Known mainly for his work with birds, Sclater also described several new species of amphibians and reptiles. Four new species of snake were described by him in a single paper in 1891.
It was at Eton that he met his future wife, Charlotte Mellen Stephenson, an American divorcee whose two sons attended the school. They were married at St George's Cathedral in 1896. Both his stepsons were killed in action during World War One. In 1942 Charlotte died of injuries sustained during the bombing of London. In 1944 Sclater died at St George's Hospital, two days after a bomb fell on his home.
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.
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.
Head Keeper of London Zoo
Senior Overseer at the Zoological Society of London
Curator of Reptiles at the Zoological Society of London. He was awarded the Silver Medal on 16th November 1955 for outstanding services in leading expeditions to collect animals from Sierra Leone in 1948, Sierra Leone and Gold Coast in 1950, Uganda in 1952, Sierra Leone in 1954 and British Guiana in 1955