George Bennett (naturalist)

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Portrait of George Bennett in the 1840s

George Bennett (born January 31, 1804 in Plymouth , England , † September 29, 1893 in Sydney , Australia ) was a British-Australian doctor and naturalist.

Life

Fascinated by the sea since his youth, Bennett made his first sea voyage to Ceylon at the age of 15 . In 1821 he returned to England and studied first in Plymouth and then at Middlesex Hospital and at the Hunterian School of Medicine, where he met well-known surgeons such as Charles Bell , Herbert Mayo (1796-1852) and Caesar Hawkins , who had a strong influence on him. On March 7, 1828, he received his membership diploma for the Royal College of Surgeons . In the meantime, Bennett made the acquaintance of Richard Owen , who was teaching comparative anatomy at the medical school of St Bartholomew's Hospital at the time. Owen was the leading British comparative anatomist of his day and his influence, particularly on paleontology , was felt throughout Bennett's career in Australia.

Bennett's forays between 1828 and 1835 spanned large areas of the Pacific. After returning from a trip to England in 1831, he brought with him a large collection of plants, a live gibbon from Singapore, and a six-year-old local girl named Elau from the New Hebrides to be sacrificed by a hostile tribe. Elau was the first native of the New Hebrides to be brought to England, where she died in Plymouth in 1834. Bennett wrote numerous scientific articles about his field trips. This work included discussions about plants, a description of a living specimen of the pearl boat and comments on certain elements of the Australian fauna. With these writings, Bennett qualified as a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London and a corresponding member of the Zoological Society of London .

Bennett visited Australia for the first time in 1829 and made his second visit to mainland Australia in the spring of 1832, where he was immediately struck by "the beauty of the flora that is so rich and lavish in this colony". Excursions into the interior followed. In doing so, he was so diligent in research that he was able to send Owen many specimens of existing fauna and a considerable number of fossils. 1835 wrote Bennett in the Transactions of the Zoological Society of London the article Notes on the Natural History and Habits of the Ornithorhyncus paradoxus, Blum , one of the earliest scientific treatises about the platypus ( Ornithorhyncus paradoxus ). In 1834 the two-volume Wanderings was published in New South Wales… Being the Journal of a Naturalist . Bennett was praised for his fine writing and generally solid observation, the only mistake he made regarding the nesting behavior of the lyre-tail , where he was apparently misled by Aboriginal people .

Portrait of Bennett in Senior Years

Back in England, Bennett was awarded the Royal College of Surgeons Gold Medal in recognition of his contributions to zoological research. In 1836 he finally moved to Australia, where he established a successful medical practice in Sydney and became a leading figure in the newly founded Australian Museum as well as in the Acclimatization Society and the New South Wales Zoological Society (later the Royal Society of New South Wales ). Bennett's collaboration with the museum, where he served as first secretary and curator, spanned many years. He now supported visiting zoologists, acted as an agent for the ornithologist John Gould, and maintained a constant correspondence with Owen and other researchers. In 1860 his second book Gatherings of a Naturalist in Australasia was published . In 1890 Bennett received the Clarke Medal of the Royal Society of New South Wales, which is awarded in honor of the geologist William Branwhite Clarke (1798-1878).

Bennett was married three times. The first marriage had two sons and three daughters, the second a son, and the third two children who died in infancy.

Dedication names

George Bennett is honored with numerous animal and plant taxas, including the Bennett cassowary ( Casuarius bennetti ), Flindersia bennettiana , the Bennett tree kangaroo ( Dendrolagus bennettianus ), Diporiphora bennettii , Myrrophis bennettii and the extinct red algae Vanvoorstia bennettiana . The Tasmanian subspecies of the red-necked wallaby is also known as the Bennett kangaroo.

Works (selection)

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lamont Lindstrom: Sophia Elau, Ungka the Gibbon, and the Pearly Nautilus . In: The Journal of Pacific History , Vol. 33, No. 1, June 1998, pp. 5-27, Taylor & Francis
  2. ^ Notes on the Natural History and Habits of the Ornithorhyncus paradoxus, Blum . In: Transactions of the Zoological Society of London , vol. I, pp. 229-258
personal data
SURNAME Bennett, George
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British physician and naturalist
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1804
PLACE OF BIRTH Plymouth , England
DATE OF DEATH September 29, 1893
Place of death Sydney , Australia