Joseph Wolf was a German artist who specialised in natural history illustration. Wolf travelled to London in 1848 and was introduced by David William Mitchell, an amateur illustrator and Secretary of the Zoological Society of London. He moved to the British Museum in 1848 and became the preferred illustrator for explorers and naturalists including David Livingstone, Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates. Wolf was commissioned by the Zoological Society of London to paint a watercolour of wapiti deer in the snow; it is dated 1881. When Charles Darwin began his study of animal expressions, he was introduced by Abraham Dee Bartlett, London Zoo Superintendent, to the abilities of Wolf in illustrating minute details of animals in action. Darwin requested Wolf to make some illustrations from photographs and living animals in the zoological garden. Wolf made numerous drawings in pen and charcoal as well as lithographs for scholarly societies such as the Zoological Society of London (he produced 340 colour plates for the ZSL Proceedings in the course of 30 years), and a very large number of illustrations for books on natural history. Until 1946, the cover of the journal Ibis carried a woodcut by Wolf of an ibis against a background with ruins, a pyramid and a rising sun.
Founded in 1826, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) is an international scientific, conservation and educational charity whose mission is to promote and achieve the worldwide conservation of animals and their habitats. It runs the Institute of Zoology, conservation projects in more than 50 countries, and two Zoos, ZSL London Zoo and ZSL Whipsnade Zoo
Robert Thomson Leiper was born in 1881in Kilmarnock, Scotland. He studied medicine at the University of Glasgow. His main focus of study was helminthology - the study of parasitic flatworms. He founded the Journal of Helminthology in 1923. He was the first professor of helminthology at the University of London and director of these studies at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine - a post he held from 1905 until his retirement in 1947.
Pathologist at ZSL London Zoo
Member of London Zoo staff, probably Head Keeper