Masters, George (1837 - 1912)

Summary

George Masters was an entomologist and a prolific collector of natural history specimens of all kinds. In the course of his many collecting expeditions through Australia he developed an unrivalled knowledge of the life histories of Australian animals. By 1860 he was employed as a gardener at Thomas Shepherd's Darling Nursery in Sydney. In the early 1860s he was sent to Queensland by William Macleay to collect insects, an association that lasted for the rest of his life. For ten years from 1864 Masters was Assistant Curator and Collector at the Australian Museum where, despite an undertaking to the contrary, he continued to collect for himself and Macleay as well as the Museum. In 1874 Masters became curator of Macleay's own collection, and remained so after Macleay's death and the transfer of the collections to the University of Sydney. As Macleay's Curator, Masters participated in the 1875 Chevert Expedition to New Guinea led by Macleay. Masters' principal publications were Catalogue of the described diurnal Lepidoptera of Australia (1873), the first book entirely devoted to Australian butterflies, and Catalogue of the described Coleoptera of Australia (1871 - 1874)

Details

Chronology

c. 1856

Life event - Migrated to Australia

1864 - 1874

Career position - Assistant Curator and Collector, Australian Museum, Sydney

1874 - 1912

Career position - Curator of the Macleay family collections and the Macleay Museum

1875

Career position - Zoological collector, Chevert Expedition

Related entries

Archival resources

The Linnean Society of New South Wales

• George Masters - Records, 1874 - 1912; The Linnean Society of New South Wales. Details

Published resources

Books

• Musgrave, A., Bibliography of Australian entomology, 1775-1930: with biographical notes on authors and collectors (Sydney: Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, 1932), 380 pp. Details

Book Sections

• Whitley, G. P., 'Masters, George (1837-1912), entomologist' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 5: 1851 - 1890 K-Q, Douglas Pike, ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1974), pp. 223-224. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A050253b.htm. Details

Journal Articles

• Fulton, Graham R., 'A detailed report on the birds collected on the Chevert Expedition to New Guinea, in 1875', Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, 143 (2021), 9-36. https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/LIN/article/view/15518. Details
• Masters, G., 'Zoology of the Chevert - ornithology, part I', Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, 1 (1) (1875), 44-64, https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/LIN/issue/view/458. 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 75. Details
• Whitley, G. P., 'George Masters, Naturalist', Australian Zoologist, 16 (2) (1971), 25-32. Details

Resources

• Wikidata, http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q21538213. Details
• VIAF - Virtual International Authority File, OCLC, https://viaf.org/viaf/94410696. Details
• 'Masters, George (18361207-19120623)', Trove, National Library of Australia, 2009, https://nla.gov.au/nla.party-617198. Details