Gilbert Percy Whitley

Gilbert Percy Whitley (born June 9, 1903 in Swaythling near Southampton , England, † July 18, 1975 in Sydney , Australia ) was a pioneer among Australia's marine biologists and worked for almost 40 years as curator of ichthyology at the Australian Museum in Sydney.

Live and act

Whitley emigrated to Sydney in 1921 with his parents and two sisters. There he worked at the Australian Museum with Allan Riverstone McCulloch, among others, and studied zoology at the Sydney Technical College and the University of Sydney. After McCulloch's death in October 1925, he followed in his footsteps and took the position of ichthyologist and later curator of ichthyology.

In 1923 he published his first scientific article The Praying Mantis . In total, he wrote over 550 essays and five books mainly about the fish of Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea and the South Pacific. He described over 320 new genera and species of fish and examined many aspects of Australian marine and freshwater fish including ecology, fisheries and taxonomy.

During his time as a curator, he conducted collecting tours with friends Tom Iredale and Anthony Musgrave, usually at his own expense. This also doubled the number of registered and identified species in the museum collection to around 37,000.

Whitley was a member and president of the Royal Zoological Society and several other organizations in New South Wales .

He retired in 1964, but continued with his scientific work. Nevertheless, he was also interested in other things: he played the piano, often went to concerts, to the theater or to art exhibitions.

In 1979 the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales donated the Whitley Award in honor of Whitley , which annually honors outstanding Australian children's or non-fiction books in the fields of zoology or biology.

Works

• with GR Allen, DF Hoese, JE Randall, BC Russell and FH Talbot: Annotated checklist of the fishes of Lord Howe Island. In: Rec. Aust. Mus. 30, 1976, pp. 365-454.
• with CH Smith: Some Biogeographers, Evolutionists and Ecologists: Chrono-Biographical Sketches. England-Australia 1903-1975
• Australian shark tragedies. In: The Victorian Naturalist. 14, 1935, pp. 195-206.
• Shark attacks in Western Australia. In: Western Australian Naturalist. 2, 1951.
• Flatheads. In: Australian Museum Magazine. 10, 1952, pp. 244-248.
• The first hundred years. In: Australian Natural History. 14, 1962, pp. 111-115.
• A Survey of Australian Ichthyology. In: Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales. 89, 1964.
• Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales. 101 (23), 1977, pp. 256-260.

literature

• Maree Murray: Whitley, Gilbert Percy (1903-1975). In: Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Center of Biography, Australian National University.
• Obituary: Gilbert Percy Whitley. In: Australian Zoologist. 19, 1976, pp. 111-112.
• M. Murray, J. Roach: Whitley, Gilbert Percy (1903-1975), Ichthyologist and Author. In: J. Ritchie, D. Langmore (Eds.): Australian Dictionary of Biography. Melbourne University Press, Melbourne 2002, pp. 542-543.
• JR Paxton, DF Hoese: Gilbert, P. Whitley 1903-1975. In: Copeia. 4, 1975, pp. 792-793.
• JR Paxton, MA McGrouther: A history of the fish collection at the Australian Museum (1860-1968), with a summary of current Australian fish collections. In: TW Pietsch, W. Anderson (Eds.): Collection Building in Ichthyology and Herpetology. Special Publication American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists. 3, 197, pp. 183-205.
• J. Pollard (Ed.): GP Whitley's Handbook of Australian Fishes. Jack Pollard, Sydney 1980.

Web links

• Australian Society for Fish Biology Hall of Fame (in English)