Person

De Vis, Charles Walter (1829 - 1915)

Born
9 May 1829
Birmingham, England
Died
30 April 1915
Toowong, Queensland, Australia
Occupation
Minister of religion, Zoologist and Ornithologist

Summary

Charles De Vis was Curator of the Queensland Museum 1882-1905 but remained on the staff as consulting scientist until 1912. He gave up the church early in his career to devote himself to science, first in England and later in Australia.

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Details

Born Charles Devis, 9 May, 1829, Birmingham, England, adopting the spelling 'De Vis' about 1882. Died Brisbane, 30 April 1915. Educated University of Cambridge (BA 1851, MA 1884). Rector of Brecon, Somersetshire; Curator of Queen's Park Museum, Manchester. Arrived Australia 1870 and settled in the Rockhampton area where he was School of Arts librarian; contributed articles to the Queenslander 1880-81, using the nom-de-plume 'Thickthorn'; Curator Queensland Museum 1885-1905, consultant 1905-12. Did important early work on fossil birds, working on specimens from the Darling Downs in Queensland and Cooper Creek in South Australia (some of which were collected by J.W. Gregory). Many of the 'new' taxa discovered by de Vis have been synonymised by the later work of Patricia Vickers Rich and Gerard van Tets (qq.v.), but his work, according to Rich, 'painted the first pictures of the fossil birds of Central Australia, most of which were of Quaternary age'. Founding member, Royal Society of Queensland 1884, president 1888-89; Foundation member Australasian Ornithologists' Union 1901 and first Vice-President.

Chronology

1851
Education - Bachelor of Arts (BA), University of Cambridge, UK
1870
Life event - Arrived in Australia
c. 1871 - c
Career position - School of Arts Librarian in Rockhampton, Queensland
c. 1882
Life event - Changed name from Devis to De Vis
1884
Career position - Founding member, Royal Society of Queensland
1884
Education - Master of Arts (MA), University of Cambridge
1885 - 1905
Career position - Curator, Queensland Museum
1888 - 1889
Career position - President, Royal Society of Queensland
1893
Career position - President, Section D (Biology), Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science
1901
Career position - Foundation member, Australasian Ornithologists' Union and first Vice-President
1905 - 1912
Career position - Consultant to the Queensland Museum
1915
Award - Honorary Member, Field Naturalists' Club of Queensland

Related Corporate Bodies

Archival resources

Queensland Museum Library

  • Charles Walter De Vis - Records, 1882 - 1912; Queensland Museum Library. Details

Published resources

Book Sections

  • Gilbert, L. A., 'De Vis, Charles Walter (1829-1915), clergyman, zoologist and museum director' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 4: 1851 - 1890 D-J, Douglas Pike, ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1972), pp. 63-64. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A040061b.htm. Details

Journal Articles

  • De Vis, C. W., 'Presidential address in Section D : Biology. Life', Report of the fifth meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 5 (1894), 104-18, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/15362282. Details
  • Ingram, Glen, 'The Writings of Thickthorn', Wildlife Australia, 23 (1) (1986), 6-7. Details
  • Mack, George, 'The Queensland Museum, 1855-1955', Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, 13 (2) (1956), 107-24. Details
  • Turnbull, Paul, 'Australian museums, Aboriginal skeletal remains, and the imagining of human evolutionary history', Museum & society, 13 (1) (2015), 72-87. https://doi.org/10.29311/mas.v13i1.318. Pages 77-78. Details
  • Whitley, G., 'Some Founders of Australian Fish Science', Australian Museum Magazine, 9 (1948). Details

Resources

See also

  • Amey, Andrew P. and Couper, Patrick J., 'Herpetological type specimens held at the Queensland Museum: a catalogue', Memoirs of the Queensland Museum - nature: 64: 19-259, 64 (2022), 19-259. https://doi.org/10.17082/j.2204-1478.64.2022.2020-12. Details
  • Robin, Libby, The Flight of the Emu: a Hundred Years of Australian Ornithology 1901-2001 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001), 492 pp. Details
  • Williams, David, Wuester, Wolfgang and Fry, Bryan Grieg, 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Australian Snake Taxonomists and a history of the Taxonomy of Australia's Venomous Snakes ', Toxicon, 48 (7) (2009), 919-930 . Details

McCarthy, G.J. & Rosanne Walker

Created: 20 October 1993, Last modified: 7 April 2022

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