James Leonard Brierley Smith

James Leonard Brierley Smith (born October 26, 1897 in Graaff-Reinet , † January 7, 1968 ) was a South African zoologist and ichthyologist .

Smith received his MSc in Chemistry from Stellenbosch University and his PhD from Cambridge University as a Philosophiae Doctor . He then lectured in chemistry at Rhodes University ; During a cure by the sea he discovered his interest in ichthyology and then switched to this field.

In December 1938 he was the first scientist to investigate the coelacanth discovered by Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer in East London in the catch of a fishing trawler and was also involved in successful expeditions in 1952/53 to catch more specimens on the Comoros . In the years up to 1949 he wrote his main work Sea Fishes of South Africa together with his second wife Margaret Mary McDonald . a. first comprehensively described over 370 species of fish. The work was updated again and again in the following years.

On January 7, 1968, after a long illness, Smith committed suicide by ingesting cyanide . Margaret McDonald later founded the JLB Smith Institute of Ichthyology (now: South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity ) at Rhodes University. Smith's son William now works as a chemist and scientific television presenter.

literature

• Samantha Weinberg: The Coelacanth. The adventurous discovery of an animal supposedly extinct for seventy million years , Argon-Verlag 1999, ISBN 3-87024-517-4 . (Paperback edition: Frankfurt a. M .: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2001. ISBN 3-596-15089-2 .)

Web links

• Correspondence between Smith and Courtenay-Latimer during the discovery of the coelacanth (English)
• Kurzbiografie (English)