Charles W. Brazenor

Charles Walter Brazenor (born April 1, 1897 in Brighton , Sussex , † May 5, 1979 in Healesville , Victoria ) was an Australian zoologist and museum director of British origin. His interests were mammalogy and herpetology .

Life

Brazenor was the son of Charles Ferris and Evelyn Beatrice Lavinia Brazenor, nee Pratt. He was educated at York House in Brighton and the Brighton Art College . During World War I he served in British India , including Afghanistan and Waziristan . 1923 emigrated Brazenor to Australia and was a taxidermist at the former National Museum of Victoria in Melbourne (now Melbourne Museum hired). In November of the same year he married Nellie Louise Goddard. From this marriage two daughters were born. In 1931, Brazenor was appointed curator of the mammals division of the National Museum of Victoria. Due to his artistic training, he was commissioned, among other things, to prepare exhibitions and design dioramas with the habitats of various animals, including the museum's first diorama in 1928 with a pride of lions. During the Second World War, Brazenor worked for the Department of Home Security, where he was part of a circle of artists tasked with camouflaging factories and other facilities. In 1953 he became assistant director and from September 1957 until his retirement in 1962 he was director of the National Museum of Victoria.

In 1934 Brazenor described the smoky Australian mouse ( Pseudomys fumeus ) and in 1936 the short-tailed jumping mouse ( Notomys amplus ), an extinct rodent species known only from two specimens collected in 1896. In 1947 he described the snake species Denisonia furva from Bougainville , which is now considered a synonym for Parapistocalamus hedigeri Roux, 1934 . In 1950 he published the book The Mammals Of Victoria and The Dental Characteristics of Monotremes and Australian Marsupials . In 1951 he published a revision of the Australian double- fingered gecko genus Diplodactylus under the title On the Victorian species of tuberculated Diplodactylus . Brazenor's best-known articles include A Re-Examination of Gymnobelideus Leadbeateri McCoy , published in 1932 in The Australian Zoologist magazine of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales . Here he gives a comprehensive overview of the five museum specimens of the croissant ( Gymnobelideus leadbeateri ) known at the time , a species that was not seen between 1909 and 1961.

literature

• Joseph A. Alexander : Who's Who in Australia , 15th Edition, Colorgravure Publications, Melbourne, Australia, 1955, p. 114

Web links

• Literature by and about Charles W. Brazenor in the WorldCat bibliographic database