Person

Olsen, Penelope Diane (1949 - )

Born
1949
Australia
Occupation
Ornithologist
Alternative Names
  • Olsen, Penny (Also known as)

Summary

Penny Olsen is recognised world-wide as one of Australia's leading specialists on raptors. Many of her publications deal with their conservation and ecology, and have resulted in a wiser use of pesticides and more efficient disposal of chemical wastes in rural Australia. She is a prolific writer whose book, Australian Birds of Prey, won the 1996 Whitley award for best popular zoological publication.

Details

Chronology

1970 - 1982
Career position - Experimental Officer at CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation)
1982 - c. 1994
Career position - Honorary Research Associate at CSIRO
1983 - 1987
Career position - Regional Coordinator (Australia and Oceania) of the World Working Group on Birds of Prey for the International Council for Bird Preservation
1984 - 1989
Career position - President of the Australasian Raptor Association (ARA)
1988 -
Career position - International Committee Member of the Raptor Research Foundation
1992
Education - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) completed at Australian National University
1994 - 1999
Career position - Australian Research Council (ARC) Postdoctoral Fellow at the Australian National University
1995 -
Career position - Member of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Fauna and Flora Committee
1996
Award - Whitley Award, Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales
1997
Award - D. L. Serventy Medal, Birds Australia
2019
Award - Fellow, BirdLife Australia

Related Awards

Related Corporate Bodies

Published resources

Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation Exhibitions

  • McCarthy, Gavan; Morgan, Helen; Smith, Ailie; van den Bosch, Alan, Where are the Women in Australian Science?, Exhibition of the Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation, First published 2003 with lists updated regulary edn, Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, Melbourne, Victoria, 2003, https://eoas.info/exhibitions/wisa/wisa.html. Details

Books

  • Olsen, Penny, Feather and Brush: Three Centuries of Australian Bird Art (Melbourne: CSIRO Publishing, 2001), 240 pp. Details
  • Olsen, Penny, A Brush with Birds: Australian Bird Art from the National Library of Australia (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2008), 124 pp. Details
  • Olsen, Penny, Collecting Ladies: Ferdinand von Mueller and Women Botanical Artists (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2012), 248 pp. Details
  • Olsen, Penny, Cayley and Son: the Life and Art of Neville Henry Cayley and Neville William Cayley (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2013), 227 pp. Details
  • Olsen, Penny, An eye for nature: the life and art of William T. Cooper (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2014), 288 pp. Details
  • Olsen, Penny, Louisa Atkinson's nature notes (Canberra: National Library of Australia in association with State Library of New South Wales, 2015), 108 pp. Details
  • Olsen, Penny, Feather and brush: a history of Australian bird art (Clayton, Vic.: CSIRO Publishing, 2022), 352 pp. Details

Journal Articles

Resources

Reviews

  • Olsen, Penny, An eye for nature: the life and art of William T. Cooper (2014)
    Clarkson, John, 'More than a portrait painter to the birds: William T. Cooper (1934-2015)', Australasian Systematic Botany Society Newsletter, 162/3, (2015), 37-41. Details
  • Olsen, Penny, Collecting Ladies: Ferdinand von Mueller and Women Botanical Artists (2012)
    Cohn, Helen M., Historical Records of Australian Science, 24 (2), (2013), 343-4, https://doi.org/10.1071/HR13005. Details
  • Olsen, Penny, Feather and brush: a history of Australian bird art (2022)
    Hodson, Trevor, Historical Records of Australian Science, 33 (2), (2022), 194-5, https://doi.org/10.1071/HR22012. Details
  • Book review
    Olsen, Penny, 'David Owen: Thylacine: the Tragic Tale of the Tasmanian Tiger (2003)', Historical Records of Australian Science, 15 (1), (2004), 124-125. https://doi.org/10.1071/HR03015. Details
  • Meredith, Louisa Anne, My Home in Tasmania: During a Residence of Nine Years (2010)
    Olsen, Penny, Historical Records of Australian Science, 22 (2), (2011), 312-3, https://doi.org/10.1071/HR11013. Details
  • Landon, Carolyn, Banksia lady: Celia Rosser, botanical artist (2015)
    Olsen, Penny, Australian Historical Studies, 41 (1), (2016), 171-3. Details
  • Olsen, Penny, Feather and Brush: Three Centuries of Australian Bird Art (2000)
    Rowley, Ian, Historical Records of Australian Science, 13 (4), (2001), 530-532. https://doi.org/10.1071/HR0011340521. Details

See also

  • Robin, Libby, The Flight of the Emu: a Hundred Years of Australian Ornithology 1901-2001 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001), 492 pp. Details

Rosanne Walker

EOAS ID: biogs/P003184b.htm

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

Published by the Centre for Transformative Innovation, Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2024 February (Kooyang - Gariwerd calendar)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#kooyang
For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P003184b.htm

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260