Albert George Brighton (1900–1988) by unknown photographer [centre, in fedora] © reserved; photograph courtesy of Nicola Hanscombe
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Brighton, Albert George [Peter] (1900–1988), palaeontologist and curator, was born on 29 December 1900 at 13 Conyers Road, Streatham, London, the son of George Freeston Brighton, gardener, and his wife, Susan Alice Jayne. He was educated at St Leonard's School, Streatham, and Westminster City School...
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Buckland [née Morland], Mary (1797–1857), geological artist and curator, was born on 20 November 1797 in St Helen's parish, Abingdon, Berkshire, the eldest daughter of Benjamin Morland (1768–1833), solicitor (and a member of the West Ilsley brewing family), and his wife, Harriet Baster (1777–1799)...
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Clift, William (1775–1849), museum curator and scientific illustrator, was born at Burcombe, near Bodmin, Cornwall, on 14 February 1775, and was baptized (as William Cleft) in the Bodmin parish church on 12 April that year. He was the youngest of the seven children (...
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Etheridge, Robert (1819–1903), palaeontologist and museum curator, was born at Ross, Herefordshire, on 3 December 1819, the elder of the two sons of Thomas Etheridge, a Gloucester shipper, and his wife, Hannah Pardoe. Details of his education are uncertain; Etheridge is said to have attended a private school in ...
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Sir William Henry Flower (1831–1899) by C. Schmid, 1868 reproduced by kind permission of the President and Council of the Royal College of Surgeons of London
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Flower, Sir William Henry (1831–1899), zoologist and museum curator, was born on 30 November 1831 in Stratford upon Avon, the second son of Edward Fordham Flower (1805–1883) and his wife, Selina Greaves (d. 1884). His father, a businessman, established Flowers brewery. His elder brother, ...
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Clemency Thorne Fisher
Fraser, Louis (b. 1819/20–d. in or after 1883), naturalist and museum curator, was the son of Hugh Fraser, mariner (d. in or before 1844); details of his mother are unknown. The form of his education is likewise obscure, but from his writings he appears to have been a careful naturalist with limited scope and ambitions. In 1832 he began work as an assistant at the ...
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Edward Whitaker Gray (1748–1806) by Sir Augustus Wall Callcott [detail] © Royal Society
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Anita McConnell
Gray, Edward Whitaker (1748–1806), physician and museum curator, was born on 21 March 1748, probably in London, the second son of Samuel Gray (bap. 1693?, d. 1766), seedsman, and his wife, Juliana, née Kelly (d. 1774). An older brother, Samuel Gray (1739–1771)...
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John Edward Gray (1800–1875) by Maull & Polyblank, 1855 © National Portrait Gallery, London
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R. J. Cleevely
Gray, John Edward (1800–1875), zoologist and museum curator, was born at Walsall, Staffordshire, on 12 February 1800, the second son of Samuel Frederick Gray (1766–1828), naturalist and pharmacologist, and his wife, Elizabeth Forfeit (1777–1852), the daughter of a picture dealer in Covent Garden...
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Judith M. Heimann
Harrisson, Tom Harnett (1911–1976), ornithologist, museum curator, and co-founder of the Mass-Observation social survey project, was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 26 September 1911, the elder of the two children of Brigadier-General Geoffry Harnett Harrisson (1881–1939) and his wife, Marie Ellen (Doll; 1886–1961)...
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M. D. Crane
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Miller [formerly Müller], Johann Samuel [John Samuel] (1779–1830), naturalist and museum curator, was born on 26 February 1779 in Danzig, the only son of Johann Beniamin Müller and his first wife, Eleonor Lehman. He came to England in 1801 and settled in ...
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Walter Potter (1835–1918) by unknown photographer courtesy of the British Historical Taxidermy Society
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Pat Morris
Potter, Walter (1835–1918), taxidermist, was born at Bramber, Sussex, on 2 July 1835 (and was baptized at Bramber on 13 September), the sixth son of James Potter (d. 1867), labourer, and his wife, Sarah (1802/3–1838). His mother died when he was young, and his father, by then employed as a publican, was remarried in 1840, to ...
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Martin Campbell-Kelly
Sale, Anthony Edgar [Tony] (1931–2011), electrical engineer, inventor, and museum curator, was born at 127 West Wycombe Road, High Wycombe, on 30 January 1931, the son of Stewart George Sale (1905–1943), news editor of the Bucks Mail, killed while covering the landings at ...
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Richard Bowdler Sharpe (1847–1909) by Maull & Fox by permission of the Linnean Society of London
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Christine E. Jackson
Sharpe, Richard Bowdler (1847–1909), ornithologist and museum curator, was born on 22 November 1847 at 1 Skinner Street, Snow Hill, London, the son of Thomas Bowdler Sharpe who edited and published Sharpe's London Magazine, and his wife, Elizabeth. He began his education under an aunt who ran a preparatory school in ...
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Steven J. Plunkett
Taylor, John Ellor (1837–1895), curator and popularizer of science, was born on 21 September 1837 at Levenshulme, near Manchester, the eldest son of William Taylor (d. 1864), a Lancashire cotton-factory foreman, and his wife, Maria Ellor (b. c.1806, d. after 1895)...
