Gunn, Ronald Campbell (1808 - 1881)

Summary

Ronald Gunn was a colonial public servant and politician who also had an interest in botany. From 1842-1849 he was editor of the Tasmanian Journal of Natural Science and was a plant collector for many years for Sir William Jackson Hooker, as well as his son, Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker. He assisted Joseph Hooker in sending plant collections (gathered in Tasmania and New Zealand during the British Antarctic Expedition of 1839-1843) to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Ronald Gunn is commemorated in Eucalytpus gunnii, which Joseph Hooker named in his honour in 1844. The Tasmanian Herbarium holds a collection of Gunn's plant specimens.

Details

Chronology

1844

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus gunnii Hook.f. was named in Gunn's honour

Related entries

Archival resources

Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science

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

Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales

• Ronald Campbell Gunn - Records, ML MSS 1180; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details
• Ronald Campbell Gunn - Records, 1825 - 1828, MS Q571; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details
• Ronald Campbell Gunn - Records, 1859 - 1860, MS Q167; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details
• Ronald Campbell Gunn - Records, c. 1833 - c. 1854, A 316; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details

National Library of Australia Manuscript Collection

• Charles Gould - Records, 1865 - 1870, MS 162; National Library of Australia Manuscript Collection. Details

Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Community History Collection

• Ronald Campbell Gunn - Records, 1800 - 1850; Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Community History Collection. 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

• Buchanan, A. M., The Tasmanian Collecting Localities of Ronald Gunn and Joseph Milligan (Hobart: Tasmanian Herbarium, 1988), 56 pp. Details
• Burns, T. E.; and Skemp, J. R., Van Diemen's Land correspondents: letters from R. C. Gunn, R. W. Lawrence, Jorgen Jorgenson, Sir John Franklin and others to Sir William Hooker, 1827 - 1849 (Launceston: Queen Victoria Museum, 1961), 142 pp. Details
• Pybus, Cassandra, A very secret trade: the dark story of gentlemen collectors in Tasmania (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2024), 318 pp. https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Cassandra-Pybus-Very-Secret-Trade-9781761066344. Pages 141-142, 147-160, 166, 168, 170-173, 175, 179-188, 282-283 - friend of G.A. Robinson. Details

Book Sections

• Burns, T. E.; Skemp, J. R., 'Gunn, Ronald Campbell (1808-1881), botanist, public servant and politician' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 1: 1788 - 1850 A-H, Douglas Pike, ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1966), pp. 492-493. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A010448b.htm. Details
• Ducker, Sophie C., 'Ronald Campbell Gunn's visit to Port Phillip in 1836' in Aspects of Tasmanian botany : a tribute to Winifred Curtis, Banks, M. R., ed. (Hobart: Royal Society of Tasmania, 1991), pp. 201-12. Details
• Lucas, A. M., 'Ronald Campbell Gunn, 1808-1881' in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Details

Conference Papers

• Buchanan, A.M., 'Ronald Campbell Gunn 1808-1881', in History of Systematic Botany in Australasia: Proceedings of a Symposium Held at the University of Melbourne, 25-27 May 1988 edited by Short, P.S. (Melbourne: Australian Systematic Botany Society, 1990), pp. 179-192.. Details

Edited Books

• Davis, William E. ed., Early Tasmanian Ornithology: the Correspondence of Ronald Gunn and James Grant, 1836-1838 (Cambridge, MA: Nuttall Ornithological Club, 2009), 263 pp. Details

Journal Articles

• Balaam, Violet E., 'Ronald Campbell Gunn', The Victorian naturalist, 82 (3) (1965), 90-91. Details
• Blackwood, Lynette, 'The contribution of Ronald Campbell Gunn to our knowledge of the flora and fauna of Tasmania', La Trobeana, 11 (3) (2012), 30-6. Details
• Brown, Austin J., 'Ronald Gunn's Tasmanian "agrostid" grass collections (Poaceae)', Muelleria, 40 (2022), 57-131. Details
• Earp, Clem, '"A Correspondence Long Interrupted": Ronald Gunn Re-establishes Contact with Joseph Hooker in 1870', The Victorian naturalist, 131 (6) (2014), 204-6. Details
• Endersby, J., '"From having no herbarium." Local knowledge versus metropolitan expertise: Joseph Hooker's Australasian correspondence with William Colenso and Ronald Gunn', Pacific science, 55 (4) (2001), 343-58. Details
• Gunn, R. C., 'Observations on the flora of Geelong, Port Phillip', Tasmanian journal of natural science, 1 (1842), 203-7. Details
• Reynolds, J., 'Ronald Campbell Gunn', Tasmanian Naturalist, 1 (1926). Details

Resources

• VIAF - Virtual International Authority File, OCLC, https://viaf.org/viaf/160916758. Details
• Wikidata, http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q4133320. Details
• 'Gunn, Ronald Campbell (1808-1881)', Trove, National Library of Australia, 2009, https://nla.gov.au/nla.party-1464992. Details

Theses

• Cave, Eleanor Catherine, 'Flora Tasmaniae: Tasmanian Naturalists and Imperial Botany, 1829-1860', PhD thesis, University of Tasmania, 2012, 385 pp. Details

See also

• Henderson, M. Helen; and Henderson, William G., The greater prize than gold: Augustus Oldfield, nineteenth century botanical collector and ethnographer (Perth, W.A.: The Book Reality Experience, 2018), 520 pp. Details
• Maiden, J. H., 'Records of Tasmanian Botanists', Papers and proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania, 1909 (1909), 9-29. Details
• Serle, Percival, Dictionary of Australian biography (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1949). Details
• Sleightholme, Stephen R.; Campbell, Cameron R.; and Kitchener, Andrew C., 'Frank Haes' thylacine', Australian zoologist, 38 (2) (2016), 203-11. https://dx.doi.org/10.7882/AZ2016.022. Details
• Willis, J. H., 'Botanical pioneers in Victoria - I', Victorian naturalist, 66 (5) (1949), 83-9. Details
• Willis, J. H., Botanical Pioneers in Victoria, vol. 66 ([Melbourne]: [Brown Prior Anderson], 1949), 19 pp. Details