Cleland, John Burton (1878 - 1971)

Summary

Sir John Cleland was the first Marks Professor of Pathology at the University of Adelaide (1920 to 1948). With T.D. Campbell and Frederick Wood Jones he formed the Board of Anthropological Research at the University which he chaired for nearly 30 years. Earlier he was Government Pathologist for the Western Australian Department of Public Health (1905-1909) and Microbiologist at the Government Bureau of Microbiology in Sydney (1909-1920).

Details

He was also a passionate naturalist and ornithologist who wrote a two volume book on the larger fungi of South Australia (1934-1935) and presented a collection of nearly 30,000 plants, which included nearly 60 new species, to the South Australian Herbarium. Cleland also donated nearly 1,000 bird-skins to Gregory Mathews for his book, The Birds of Australia (1910-1927), a number of which became type specimens. About 40 species or subspecies of fungi, vascular plants and animals were named after him, as well as a new genus Clelandia in both the plant and animal worlds. John Cleland is also commemorated by the Cleland Conservation Park in the Mount Lofty Ranges, South Australia (opened 1967) and the Cleland Kindergarten in Beaumont, South Australia. He was involved in numerous other activities and was a key instigator of the foundation of the Flora and Fauna Handbooks Committee of South Australia, a one-time president (and founding member) of the Medical Sciences Club of South Australia and President of the Western Australian Natural History Society.

Chronology

1900

Education - Bachelor of Medicine (MB), University of Adelaide (?)

1900

Career position - House Surgeon, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, New South Wales

1901 - 1902

Career position - Second Resident Pathologist, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital

1902

Education - Doctor of Medicine (MD), University of Sydney (?)

1903

Career position - Study trip to the London School of Tropical Medicine and to Glasgow

1904

Career position - Cancer Research Scholar, the London Hospital

1905 - 1909

Career position - Western Australian Government Bacteriologist and Pathologist

1908 - 1909

Career position - President, Western Australian Natural History Society

1909 - 1920

Career position - Microbiologist then Senior Microbiologist, Bureau of Microbiology in Sydney

1912

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus clelandii Maiden, named for John Cleland and his uncle Allan Fraser Cleland

1912 - 1920

Career position - Member of Council, Linnean Society of New South Wales

1917

Career position - President, Royal Society of New South Wales

1920 - 1938

Career position - Honorary Pathologist then Honorary Consultant, Adelaide Hospital

1920 - 1948

Career position - Inaugural Marks Professor of Pathology (including bacteriology), then Professor Emeritus, University of Adelaide

1921 -

Career position - Foundation Councillor (Pathology), Australian National Research Council

1921 - 1948

Career position - Founder and Editor of the Royal Adelaide Hospital's Medical and Scientific Archives

1922 - 1968

Career position - Chairman, Flora and Fauna Handbooks Committee of South Australia

1924

Career position - President, Field Naturalists' Section, Royal Society of South Australia

1926

Career position - Foundation Member and Member of Council, Anthropological Society of South Australia

1926 - 1956

Career position - Inaugural Member, and Chairman, Board of Anthropological Research

1927 - 1928

Career position - President, Royal Society of South Australia

1933

Award - Sir Joseph Verco Medal, Royal Society of South Australia

1934

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus odorata Behr & Schlecht. var. macrocarpa Blakely. Cleland collected the type material

1934

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus odorata Behr & Schlecht. var. refracta Blakely. Cleland collected the type material.

1935 - 1936

Career position - President, Royal Australasian Ornithologists' Union

1936 - 1937

Career position - President, Field Naturalists' Section, Royal Society of South Australia

1936 - 1955

Career position - Chairman, Belair National Park in South Australia

1937

Career event - Fellow, Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science (ANZAAS)

1938 - 1939

Career position - President, South Australian Ornithological Association

1939

Award - Clive Lord Memorial Medal, Royal Society of Tasmania

1940 - 1941

Career position - President, Royal Society of South Australia

1949

Award - Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) - Professor of Pathology at the University of Adelaide

1949 - 1971

Award - Honorary Life Member, Royal Australasian Ornithologists' Union

1949 - 1971

Award - Honorary Fellow, Royal Society of South Australia (FRS Hon)

1952

Award - Australian Natural History Medallion, Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria

1961 - 1971

Award - Life member of the South Australian Ornithological Association

1964

Award - John Lewis Gold Medal, Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, South Australian Branch

1964

Award - Knight Bachelor (Kt) - Professor of Pathology at Adelaide University

Related entries

Archival resources

Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science

• Australian Botanists - Biographies, MS 064; Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science. Details

Australian Medical Association (Victorian Branch)

• John Burton Cleland - Records, 1935 - 1977; Australian Medical Association (Victorian Branch). Details

Barr Smith Library, Special Collections, The University of Adelaide

• John Burton Cleland - Records, 1907 - 1972, SR 572 C61; Barr Smith Library, Special Collections, The University of Adelaide. Details

National Herbarium, Melbourne

• John Burton Cleland - Records, 1931 - 1968, MSS 1; National Herbarium, Melbourne. Details

State Library of South Australia, Mortlock Library of South Australiana

• John Burton Cleland - Records, 1626 - 1971, PRG 5; State Library of South Australia, Mortlock Library of South Australiana. Details

Waite Agricultural Research Institute

• John Burton Cleland - Records, 1950 - 1971; Waite Agricultural Research Institute. Details

Published resources

Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation Exhibitions

• McCarthy, Gavan; Smith, Ailie; Moje, Christine; Rigby, Rebecca, The Study of Australian Eucalypts, eScholarship Research Centre, 2013, http://www.eoas.info/eucalypts/index.html. Details

Books

• Cleland, John Burton; illustrated by Rosa Fiveash, Toadstools and mushrooms and other larger fungi of South Australia, 2 vols (Adelaide: Government Printer, 1934-1935). Details
• McKenna, Mark, Return to Uluru: a killing; a hidden history: a story that goes to the heart of the nation (Carlton, Vic.: Black Inc., 2021), 256 pp. Chairman, Commonwealth Board of Enquiry 1935 into the death of Yokununna at Uluru; pages 84, 86, 89, 94-5, 99, 101-2, 171, 195. Details

Book Sections

• Southcott, R. V., 'Cleland, Sir John Burton (1878-1971), pathologist and naturalist' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 8: 1891 - 1939 Cl-Gib, Bede Nairn and Geoffrey Serle, eds (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1981), pp. 23-25, http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A080024b.htm. Details

Journal Articles

• 'John Burton Cleland. A tribute on his eightieth birthday', Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 82 (1959), 339-344, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/41002858. Details
• '[Obituary]: Vale...Professor Sir John Cleland', South Australian Naturalist, 46 (1) (1971), 14-15. Details
• 'Obituaries: Clarence Leslie Lang; John Burton Cleland', Emu, 72 (3) (1972), 117-118. Details
• 'Obituary: Sir John Burton Cleland, 1878-1971', Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia, 56 (3) (1973), 94-95. Details
• Cleland, J Burton, ' Obituary: Robert Henry Pulleine', Medical Journal of Australia, 2 (11) (1935), 362-5. Details
• Cleland, J. B., 'Obituary: Frank Tidswell', Medical journal of Australia (1941). Details
• Cleland, J. B., 'Obituary: Captain S. A. White (1870 - 1954)', South Australian ornithologist, 21 (2/3) (1954), 34. Details
• Cleland, J. Burton, 'Obituary: Richard Sanders Rogers', Medical Journal of Australia, 1942 (1) (1942), 589-90. Details
• Cleland, J.B., 'The History of Ornithology in South Australia', Emu, 36, 37 (1937), 197-221; 296-312,133-147. Details
• Cleland, J.B., 'The Naturalist in Medicine with Particular Reference to Australia. The Archibald Watson Memorial Lecture', Medical Journal of Australia (1950), 547-551. Details
• Cleland, J.B., 'The Naturalist in Medicine with Particular Reference to Australia', Medical Journal of Australia (1950), 549-563. Details
• Cleland, J.B., 'Dicksonia in the Mount Lofty Ranges', South Australian Naturalist, 43 (1968). Details
• Cleland, J.B., 'Reminiscences of the Early Days of 'the Field Naturalists' Section of the Royal Society of SA', South Australian Naturalist, 44 (2) (1969), 21-23. Details
• J. B. C. [ie John B. Cleland], 'Douglas Mawson, 1882-1958 (Memorial series, no. 17)', Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, 84 (3) (1960), 410-414. Details
• Johnston, H.; and Cleland, J. B., 'The history of the Aboriginal narcotic, pituri', Oceania, 4 (1933), 201-89. Details
• Kraehenbuehl, D. N., '[Obituary]: Professor Sir John Burton Cleland 1878-1971', South Australian Ornithologist, 26 (1) (1971), 2-4. Details
• Southcott, R. V., 'Obituary: John Burton Cleland, Kt, CBE, MD, ChM, FRACP', Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 95 (4) (1971), 242-247, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/41079048. Details
• Southcott, R. V., 'John Burton Cleland', Medical Journal of Australia, 1972 (1) (1972), 192-3. Details
• Thomas, David, 'What Professor Cleland Did in his Holidays: Collecting Expeditions to Central Australia as Indigenous Health Research, 1925-1939', Health and History, 4 (2) (2002), 57-79. Details

Resources

• VIAF - Virtual International Authority File, OCLC, https://viaf.org/viaf/77785771. Details
• Wikidata, http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4223546. Details
• 'Cleland, J B (1878-1971)', Trove, National Library of Australia, 2009, https://nla.gov.au/nla.party-553118. Details

See also

• French, E. L.; and Stewart, D.F., 'Lionel Bately Bull, 1889-1978', Historical Records of Australian Science, 5 (4) (1983), 90-110. https://doi.org/10.1071/HR9830540090. Details
• Hall, Norman, Botanists of the Eucalypts: short biographies of people who have named eucalypts, whose names have been given to species or who have collected type material (Melbourne: CSIRO, 1978), 101 pp. Details
• Jones, P. G., 'South Australian anthropological history: the Board for Anthropological Research and its early expeditions', Records of the South Australian Museum, 20 (1987), 71-92. Details
• Robin, Libby, The Flight of the Emu: a Hundred Years of Australian Ornithology 1901-2001 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001), 492 pp. Details
• Winkel, Kenneth D.; Mirtschin, Peter and Pearn, John, 'Twentieth Century Toxinology and Antivenom development in Australia', Toxicon, 48 (7) (2006), 738-754 . Details