Reginald Frederick Lawrence

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Reginald Frederick Lawrence (born March 6, 1897 in George , Cape Colony ; died October 9, 1987 in Pietermaritzburg ) was a South African museum director, zoologist and parasitologist who worked primarily as an arachnologist .

Youth and Studies

Reginald Frederick Lawrence attended a boys' school in Grahamstown from 1908 to 1913 and a high school in Tulbagh until 1915 . He then began studying zoology in Cape Town at the South African College, now the University of Cape Town . His studies were interrupted by the First World War, during which he served as an infantryman in France for two years and was wounded in 1918. After his recovery, Lawrence continued his studies and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1922 .

job

In 1922, Lawrence applied for a position at the South African Museum in Cape Town. Louis Péringuey , the director of the museum, required him to acquire extensive knowledge of arachnology before being employed . With the help of a borrowed French dictionary, Lawrence quickly familiarized himself with the contents of Eugène Simon's Histoire Naturelle des Araignées and was initially hired as a probationary assistant for the areas of arachnids , millipedes , amphibians and reptiles . In the early years of his career, Lawrence conducted extensive collecting trips and field studies . His first expedition took him to Mozambique in 1923 , where he explored the coast using donkeys as a means of transport. From 1923 to 1925 he spent three months a year on expeditions to the north of South West Africa , up to the Angola border. The extensive collection of arachnids that he had built up during these trips formed the basis of his dissertation, for which he received a Ph.D. in 1928. from the University of Cape Town.

From 1935 Lawrence was director of the Natal Museum in Pietermaritzburg , and in this capacity editor of the scientific journal Annals of the Natal Museum (today African Invertebrates ). He gave up the position of museum director in 1948 in order to be able to concentrate exclusively on his research. He became an employee of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research , continued to work in this capacity at the museum, and in 1953 became a scientific employee of the Natal Museum. After retiring in 1964, he moved to Grahamstown and continued his research at the Albany Museum into old age. The extensive zoological collections built by Lawrence are now housed in the Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town and the KwaZulu Natal Museum in Pietermaritzburg.

Lawrence always considered field studies an essential element of his research and made numerous trips to the primeval forests of all of southern Africa. In 1953 he published The Biology of the Cryptic Fauna of Forests, his main scientific work, which was a pioneering achievement in the biogeography of the arachnids. During his almost 60 years of scientific activity, Lawrence wrote more than 210 articles and books on natural history , biogeography, museum science and the systematics and biology of various taxonomic groups, in particular arachnids, myriapods and reptiles. His last book was in 1984 on the centipedes and millipedes of South Africa. Lawrence was a member of numerous South African and international learned societies, including the American Arachnological Society and the International Society of Arachnology .

Publications (selection)

Initial descriptions (selection)

Dedication names (selection)

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Charles E. Griswold: Reginald Frederick Lawrence, 1897–1987 , p. 278.
  2. ^ A b Rodney Moffett: A Biographical Dictionary of Contributors to the Natural History of the Free State and Lesotho . Sun Press, Bloemfontein 2014, ISBN 978-1-920382-34-6 .
  3. ↑ Anonymous: Dr. RF Lawrence: A Biographical Sketch , S. i.
  4. ^ Charles E. Griswold: Reginald Frederick Lawrence, 1897-1987 , p. 279.
personal data
SURNAME Lawrence, Reginald Frederick
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African museum director, zoologist and parasitologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH George , Cape Colony
DATE OF DEATH October 9, 1987
Place of death Pietermaritzburg , South Africa