Person

Johnston, Robert Mackenzie (1843 - 1918)

Born
27 November 1843
Connage, Inverness, Scotland
Died
20 April 1918
Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Occupation
Statistician and Naturalist
Alternative Names
  • Johnstone, Robert Mackenzie

Summary

Robert Johnston arrived in Tasmania in 1870 and after working as an accountant for the Launceston and Western Railway and Government Railways was appointed Government Statistician and Registrar-General 1882. Johnston was also interested in botany and geology, and he explored and collected specimens widely throughout Tasmania

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Details

Chronology

1882 - 1918
Career position - Government Statistician and Registrar-General of Tasmania
1888 -
Career event - Original [founding] member, Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science
1897 - 1911
Career position - Vice-President, Royal Society of Tasmania
1898
Career position - President, Section G (Economic Science and Agriculture), Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science
1913
Career position - President, Section G (Social and Statistical Science), Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science
1916 - 1917
Career position - Vice-President, Royal Society of Tasmania
1922
Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus johnstonii Maiden was named for Johnston

Related Awards

Related Corporate Bodies

Archival resources

Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science

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

Royal Society of Tasmania

  • Robert Mackenzie Johnston - Records, 1871 - 1899, Ms 76, RSA/A.17(J); Royal Society of Tasmania. Details

University of Tasmania Library, Special/Rare Collection

  • Robert Mackenzie Johnston - Records, 1882 - 1884, J.3; University of Tasmania Library, Special/Rare Collection. Details

Published resources

Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation Exhibitions

Books

  • Johnston, Robert Mackenzie, Systematic Account of the Geology of Tasmania (Government Printer, 1888), 408 pp. Details
  • Wrigley, J.; and Fagg, M., Eucalypts: a Celebration (Crows Nest Australia: Allen & Unwin, 2010), 344 pp. Details

Book Sections

Journal Articles

  • Heyde, C. C., 'Official statistics in the late colonial period leading on to the work of the first Commonwealth Statistician, G. H. Knibbs', Australian Journal of Statistics, 30 (B) (1988), 23-43. Details
  • Johnston, R. M., 'How can Australian geologists safely rely upon the order of succession of the characteristic genera of fossil plants of a far distant region, in the determination of the order and relationship of Australian terrestrial formations?', Report of the first meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 1 (1889), 302-311, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/15813392. Details

Resources

See also

  • 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 Australian botanists (second supplement)', Journal and Proceedings of The Royal Society of New South Wales, 55 (1921), 150-169. Details
  • Serle, Percival, Dictionary of Australian biography (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1949). Details

Gavan McCarthy

Created: 20 October 1993, Last modified: 26 September 2024

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