scholarly journals Address of the President, Sir William Bragg, O. M., at the anniversary meeting, 30 November 1939

George Albert Boulenger was a student of the University of Brussels, his native city. He began at a very early age the study of reptiles, batrachians and fishes in the Natural History Museum at Brussels, and in 1880 became assistant naturalist there. In 1882, he was appointed a first class assistant in the Department of Zoology in the Britis Museum; he held this position until he retired in 1920. He has been described as a man of tremendous energy, an extremely methodical mind, and an amazing memory. These qualities were the foundation of the vast amount of work which he accomplished. He was one of the most distinguished of the descriptive biologists who have brought fame to the British Museum during the past hundred years. His most important contributions to science were the series of elaborate and detailed monographs, mostly published by the Museum. These still remain the basis of modern systematic work. They dealt with the groups of life which had interested him from the beginning, the batrachians, fishes, lizards, snakes and so forth. Thanks to his energy as a collector and as a stimulator of collectors, the Museum is rich in its possessions of these types; for example, it possesses an unparalleled collection of fresh water fishes.

It is my first duty to refer to Fellows who have recently passed away. George Albert Boulenger was a student of the University of Brussels, his native city. He began at a very early age the study of reptiles, batrachians and fishes in the Natural History Museum at Brussels, and in 1880 became assistant naturalist there. In 1882, he was appointed a first class assistant in the Department of Zoology in the British Museum; he held this position until he retired in 1920. He has been described as a man of tremendous energy, an extremely methodical mind, and an amazing memory. These qualities were the foundation of the vast amount of work which he accomplished. He was one of the most distinguished of the descriptive biologists who have brought fame to the British Museum during the past hundred years. His most important contributions to science were the series of elaborate and detailed monographs, mostly published by the Museum. These still remain the basis of modern systematic work. They dealt with the groups of life which had interested him from the beginning, the batrachians, fishes, lizards, snakes and so forth. Thanks to his energy as a collector and as a stimulator of collectors, the Museum is rich in its possessions of these types; for example, it possesses an unparalleled collection of fresh water fishes. Boulenger was elected a Fellow in 1894 and served on the Council from 1903 to 1905. He was for some years a Vice-president of the Zoological Society and received many honours at home and abroad. He was naturalized in this country. Towards the end of his long life he forsook his reptiles and for twenty years devoted himself to the study of roses.


1866 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 444-449
Author(s):  
Wm. Turner

1st, Scaphocephalus.—After making reference to his previous papers, more especially to that in which he had described several specimens of the scaphocephalic skull, in which he had discussed the influence exercised on the production of deformities of the cranium, by a premature closure or obliteration of the sutures, and to the recent memoirs of Professor von Düben of Stockholm,† and Dr John Thurnam, the author proceeded to relate two additional cases of scaphocephalus to those he had already recorded. He had met with one of these in the head of a living person, the other in a skull in the Natural History Museum of the University of Edinburgh.


2014 ◽  
pp. 12-23
Author(s):  
András Bozsik

Béla Lipthay lepidopterologist, entomologist, museologist, agriculturist, hussar lieutenant, life-saving Roman Catholic, descendant of the historical family Lipthay de Kisfalud et Lubelle did a long way from his home village Lovrin to Szécsény, the one-time land of his ancestors. His life coincided with the disintegration of the historical Hungary, and the most serious trials of the Hungarian society, culture and spirit. These changes affected him as a member of Hungarian aristocracy many times and in fact wanted to destroy him. The fortune of the ancestors have been swept away by the storms of the wars and confiscated but the human strength of character, the consciousness, the talent, the diligence, the sanctuary of faith have remained. All these made him possible to survive, to do his everyday hard creative work, which gained him affection and respect of the people living around him. Lipthay Béla was mainly lepidopterist and dealt with the the species of Hungary. Place of his collection was first his native country, the Banat, and the area of the Southern Carpatian Montain, and after 1944 Nógrád county (Szécsény, Balassagyarmat, Nógrádszakál, Ipolytarnóc, Rimóc, Ludányhalászi etc.). The collected species belonged to Macrolepidoptera but he dealt also with the moths. During his life time he prepared a collection of 60000 individuals and maintained them until his passing away. Great part of this collection can be found at the zoological cabinet of Natural History Museum in Budapest. He discovered many species new for the Hungarian fauna such as e.g. Cupido osiris (Meigen, 1829), and described a new species (Chamaesphecia sevenari Lipthay, 1961) which later proved to be a synonym of Chamaesphecia nigrifrons (Le Cerf, 1911). He knew well the most famous collectors and specialists of the age. After the first World War he worked together with Frigyes König, László Diószeghy, Jenő Teleki, Norman D. Riley (leading entomologist of the British Museum at London, secretary of the Royal Entomological Society), Brisbane C. S. Warren ( member of the Royal Entomological Society), Lionel W. Rothschild (the most important private collector) and many excellent lepidopterists. After the second World War he was well known and respected by the Hungarian entomologists and lepidopterists: he was a friend of Lajos Kovács, the distinguished lepidopterist and Zoltán Kaszab, the eminent entomologist. He had a good relationship with such renowned Hungarian zoologists and entomologists like Gyula Éhik, László Gozmány, László Issekutz, László Bezsilla and László Móczár. He colleted also Hymenoptera, Diptera and capricorn beetles to be found in Hungarian and foreign collections Natural History Museum, (London), a Szekler National Museum (Marosvásárhely). He dealt with agricultural entomology because he was an experienced agriculturist as far as he had the opportunity to do that. He painted wonderful agricultural entomology posters and organized expositions e.g. on the pests of industrial crops and hunting at Balassagyarmat and Salgótarján.


Phytotaxa ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 331 (1) ◽  
pp. 35 ◽  
Author(s):  
DIRK C. ALBACH ◽  
DÁNIEL PIFKÓ ◽  
ZOLTÁN BARINA

Veronica subgen. Pseudolysimachium is a group of 30 species ranging across northern Eurasia in various open habitats from dry steppe to swamps. It includes several horticulturally important species that have been crossed in the past. As such, it exemplifies a group with long taxonomic tradition, exemplified by more than 600 valid names, which also indicates its variability. In the process of identifying the evolutionary important units, molecular markers have started to help immensely. However, assigning names to identified significant groups of populations has been hindered by problems in typification. Here, we try to alleviate the problem for the taxa in southeastern Europe, which have been analyzed rigorously using AFLP fingerprints in the past, by lectotypifying 11 names and neotypifying four names, mostly based on specimens found in the Hungarian Natural History Museum Budapest (BP). This allowed revising Veronica barrelieri with its three subspecies and synonyms.


2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Kidman

Many of Ralph Tate's achievements as the University of Adelaide's foundation Professor of Natural Science arewell known.The focus here is on the quite remarkable, but almost forgotten, natural history museum that he built at the University and that after his death was named the Tate Museum. The paper outlines and explains the difficulties that Tate encountered in establishing the museum, the strictly geological focus of his successors and the gradual dispersal of Tate's main collections.


1910 ◽  
Vol 7 (9) ◽  
pp. 407-410
Author(s):  
Henry Woodward

Many years ago the late Mr. Townshend M. Hall, F.G.S., of Pilton, Barnstaple, specially devoted his energies to the geology and palæontology of the Devonian rocks of North Devon, and in addition to a set of fossils acquired from him, now in the British Museum (Natural History), he left a series of local fossils to the Museum in the Athenæum at Barnstaple. This collection has been kindly curated by Mr. J. G. Hamling, F.G.S., of The Close, Barnstaple, North Devon, who takes a deep interest in the geology of the district. Mr. Hamling has called my attention to an interesting specimen in this collection which proves to be a pygidium of Bronteus, collected by the late Mr. Townshend M. Hall in the Devonian rocks of Gerolstein in the Eifel, which country he had visited many years ago in company with the late Mr. John Edward Lee, F.G.S., of Torquay. In remembrance of that excursion Mr. Hall had presented the counterpart of this fossil to Mr. J. E. Lee, and it was supposed to be in this gentleman's collection, but it cannot now be found. There is, I believe, a good cast of the fossil in the Townshend Hall Collection in the Natural History Museum.


Zootaxa ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 2201 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-68
Author(s):  
STEFAN KOERBER

In 1891 Axel Johan Einar Lönnberg became a Doctor of Science and a Fellow of Zoology at the University of Uppsala. From 1904 to 1933, he served as head of the Vertebrate Department of the Royal Natural History Museum of Stockholm where after his expeditions around the world he worked the collected material himself. Although he was specialized in ornithology and the fauna of his homecountry Sweden, Lönnberg worked on so many different zoological groups “that since the days of Linnaeus hardly anyone has known so much about so many branches in zoology as Lönnberg” (Anonymous 1943). One of his special interests was to educate his Swedish countrymen about their native animals and he accomplished this during many years as editor and multiple author of the journal Fauna och Flora.


The following descriptions of Shropshire trilobites, mostly collected from urchison’s (1839) type section of the Caradoc Series, are from Bancroft manu-sripts which will ultimately be deposited in the British Museum (Natural History), here the Bancroft Collection of fossils is housed. As far as possible the original xt has been preserved, apart from material necessary to bring it up to date and tsertion of references to various publications. Since in Bancroft’s paper on ryptolithinae (1929) the illustrations were reproduced from drawings, it has been bought well, as suggested by Richter (1930, pp. 556 - 557), to refigure some of the species from photographs. A few of Bancroft’s unpublished trilobites have been ealt with by Reed (1932) and Shirley (1936). In these cases only a minimum of reference is now given, but Bancroft’s illustrations have been retained. A recent paper by Harper (1947) describes some related species from the Lower Longvillian if Caernarvonshire. It may be added that Dr C. J. Stubblefield has given help with the text of the present publication. He, Mr R. Baker and Mr W. H. C. Ramsbottom searched for the type specimens in the Natural History Museum. Thanks to their co-operation, most of the figured examples have now been identified with the photographs.


Author(s):  
Jacopo Moggi Cecchi ◽  
Roscoe Stanyon

This volume is dedicated to the Anthropological and Ethnological section of the Natural History Museum. First the historical journey of the collections is traced from the antique nucleus of the Medici to the foundation of the National Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology, when Florence was the capitol of Italy, and the discipline of anthropology was born. The second part illustrates the multivariate collections from all over the globe. They are a precious record of the past and present biological and cultural diversity of our species opening wide horizons that rigorously connect science to the many faces of human culture, including art. The third section is dedicated to current research and opens new prospectives on the significance of ethnological and anthropological collections due to new technology and in light of a new appreciation of the museum as a living “zone of contact”.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sven Sachs

In 2016, the Natural History Museum Bielefeld received fragmentary remains of an elasmosaurid plesiosaurian from the upper Campanian of Kronsmoor (Steinburg district) in Schleswig-Holstein (northern Germany). The material includes incomplete vertebrae, phalanges and unidentifiable fragments. Additional parts of the same skeleton (a tooth, cervical-, dorsal- and caudal vertebrae, limb elements and 110 gastroliths) are housed at the Institute for Geology of the University of Hamburg and in private collections.


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