Adam White (zoologist)

Portrait of Norman Macbeth 1849

Adam White (born April 29, 1817 in Edinburgh , † January 1879 in Glasgow ) was a Scottish zoologist.

Life

White was a protégé of John Edward Gray , the Keeper of Zoology at the British Museum (later the Natural History Museum ), and entered the museum in 1835 as an assistant to Gray, which he remained until 1863. Despite his academic standing, he was not promoted, partly due to a deteriorating relationship with Gray. In 1863 he took early retirement due to depression after the death of his first wife. He only had a meager pension, spent a long time in a mental hospital (Sunnyside Lunatic Asylum in Montrose) in Scotland, married again and had more children.

White he specialized in insects and crustaceans . He described insects from China, Australia and New Zealand (the latter from the expeditions of James Clark Ross, among others ). Some initial descriptions such as the lobster genus Panulirus come from him .

In 1841 White was introduced by Félix Édouard Guérin-Méneville as member number 228 of the Société cuviérienne . In 1846 he became a Fellow of the Linnean Society.

Fonts

• List of the Specimens of Crustacea in the British Museum 1847
• A popular history of mammalia 1850
• A popular history of birds 1855
• A popular history of british crustacea 1857
• Tabular View of the Orders and Leading Families of Insects 1857
• Heads and Tales: or, Anecdotes and Stories of Quadrupeds and Other Beasts, 1870, Project Gutenberg

literature

• Paul F. Clark, Bronwen Presswell: Adam White, the Crustacean years, Raffles Bulletin of Zoology 49, 2001, 149-166
• Société Cuvierienne: Nouveaux membres admis dans la Société curvienne . In: Revue Zoologique par La Société Cuvierienne . tape 4 , 1841, p. 208 ( biodiversitylibrary.org ).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Société cuviérienne, p. 208.