Howitt, Alfred William (1830 - 1908)

Summary

Alfred Howitt, a colonial public servant, anthropologist and botanist, undertook broad anthropological research into Aboriginal culture and society. Influenced by the evolutionary hypotheses of the era and anthropological theory, he published widely on kinship and marriage. In 1861 he was asked to lead the first expedition to recover the remains of Bourke and Wills, which the party found at Coopers Creek. During his field research he collected botanical specimens and named and collected a type of Eucalyptus. He is commemorated in species of several genera; Ferdinand von Mueller named Acacia howittii (1893) for Alfred Howitt, who collected the type. The National Herbarium of Victoria holds over 1,300 of Howitt's specimens.

Details

Chronology

1859

Career event - Led an expedition to discover pastoral land near Lake Eyre

1863 - 1889

Career position - Police Magistrate and warden of the goldfields, Gippsland

1882

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus howittiana F. Muell. Was named for Alfred W. Howitt

1888 -

Career event - Original [founding] member, Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science

1889 - 1896

Career position - Victorian Secretary of Mines

1891

Career position - President, Section E (Ethnology and Anthropology), Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science

1891

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus muelleriana A.W.Howitt

1894

Award - Honorary Member, Australasian Institute of Mining Engineers

1896 - 1901

Career position - Audit Commissioner and Member of the Public Service Board, Victoria

1898

Career position - President, Section E (Ethnology and Anthropology), Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science

1904

Award - Mueller Medal, Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science

1904

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus neglecta Maiden. Howitt was collector of the type or syntype

1904 - 1907

Career position - President, Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science

1929

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus paradoxa Maiden & Blakely. Howitt was collector of type or syntype material

1934

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus obliqua L'Herit. var. discocarpa Blakely. Howitt was collector of type or syntype material

1938

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus baxteri (Benth.) Maiden & Blakely var. pedicellata Maiden & Blakely. Howitt collected the type or syntype

Related entries

Archival resources

Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science

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

National Herbarium, Melbourne

• Alfred William Howitt - Records, 1879 - 1889, MSS M11; National Herbarium, Melbourne. Details

State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection

• Alfred William Howitt - Records, 1850 - 1906; State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts 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

• Corris, P., Aborigines and Europeans in Western Victoria (Canberra: 1968). Details
• Gardner, Helen and McConvell, Patrick, Southern anthropology: a history of Fison and Howitt's Kamilaroi and Kurnai (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 329 pp. Details
• Howitt, A.W., The native tribes of south-east Australia (London: MacMillan & Co., 1904), 819 pp. Details
• Smyth, R. Brough [also Chauncy, Philip; Bidley, William; Le Souef, Albert A. C. ; Howitt, Alfred W.; Davis, John Moore; Locke, William; Greeves, Augustus F. A.; G. B. Halford.], The Aborigines of Victoria : with notes realating to the habits of the natives of other parts of Australia and Tasmania [Vol.2], vol. 2 of 2 (Melbourne: Government Printer, 1878), i-vi, 1-455 pp, https://openlibrary.org/books/OL23539869M/. Appendices D and F. Details
• Walker, Mary Howitt, Come wind, come weather : a biography of Alfred Howitt (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1971), 348 pp. Details

Book Sections

• Stanner, W. E. H., 'Howitt, Alfred William (1830-1908), explorer, natural scientist and pioneer authority on Aboriginal culture and social organization' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 4: 1851 - 1890 D-J, Douglas Pike, ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1972), pp. 432-435. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A040489b.htm. Details

Journal Articles

• 'Alfred William Howitt', Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria, 82 (1) (1969), 3-5. Details
• Frazer, J. G., 'Howitt and Fison', Folk-Lore, 20 (1909). Details
• Howitt, A. W., 'On some Australian ceremonies of initiation', Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society, 13 (4) (1884), 432-59. Details
• Howitt, A. W., 'Notes on the metamorphic rocks of the Omeo District, Gippsland', Report of the first meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 1 (1889), 206-222, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/15813294. Details
• Howitt, Alfred William, 'The Eucalypts of Gippsland (with plates)', Transactions of the Royal Society of Victoria, 2 (1) (1890-1891), 81-166. Details
• Howitt, Alfred William, 'On the Occurrence of Eucalyptus pulberulenta in Victoria', Report of the seventh meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 7 (1898), 517 - 522, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/15378505. Details
• Howitt, Alfred William, 'Notes on the Occurrence of Eucalyptus maculata in East Gippsland', The Victorian naturalist, 13 (1898), 150-1. Details
• Howitt, M. E. B., 'The Howitts in Australia', Victorian Historical Magazine, 3 (1) (1913), 1-24. Details
• McComb, Sandra, 'Expanding the Howitt way: Alfred Howitt in Victoria', La Trobe Library Journal, 99 (2017), 6-23. Details
• Spencer, W. B., 'Alfred William Howitt', The Victorian naturalist, 24 (1908), 181-9. Details
• Vallance, T. G., 'Achievement in Isolation: A. W. Howitt, Pioneering Investigator of Metamorphism in Australia', Earth Sciences History, 5 (1) (1986), 39-49. Details
• Wardlaw, Judy, 'Alfred William Howitt: Scientific Pioneer in Colonial Victoria', Victorian Historical Journal, 68 (1) (1997), 79-83. Details

Resources

• VIAF - Virtual International Authority File, OCLC, https://viaf.org/viaf/46859779. Details
• Wikidata, http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q368705. Details
• Home, R. W.; Lucas, A.M.; Maroske, Sara, Sinkora, D.M.; Voigt, J.H.; and Wells, M. [eds], The correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, 2023, https://vmcp.rbg.vic.gov.au/search/?correspondent=Alfred+Howitt. Details
• 'Howitt, A W (18300417-19080307)', Trove, National Library of Australia, 2009, https://nla.gov.au/nla.party-485804. Details

See also

• Science and the making of Victoria, with Royal Society of Victoria, 2001, http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/smv/index_h.html. Details
• Flood, Josephine M., The moth hunters: Aboriginal prehistory of the Australian Alps (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1980), 388 pp, https://www.ligatu.re/book/the-moth-hunters/. 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
• Maiden, J. H., 'Records of Victorian Botanists', The Victorian naturalist, 25 (1908), 101-117. Details
• Nobbs, Chris, 'Talking into the Wind: Collectors on the Cooper River, 1890-1910' in The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australian Museum Collections, Peterson, Nicolas, Allen, Lindy and Hamby, Louise, eds (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2009), pp. 206-34. Details
• Serle, Percival, Dictionary of Australian biography (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1949). Details