Person

Alexander, Wilfred Backhouse (1885 - 1965)

Born
4 February 1885
Croydon, Surrey, England
Died
8 December 1965
Parkstone, Dorset, England
Occupation
Ornithologist

Summary

Wilfred Alexander joined the staff of the Western Australian Museum in 1912 and was made Keeper of Biology in 1915. In 1920 he was appointed biologist to the Prickly Pear Board, Queensland and later Officer-in-Charge. He left Australia in 1925.

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Details

Chronology

1909
Education - Bachelor of Arts (BA), King's College Cambridge, UK
1910 - 1911
Career position - Assistant Superintendent at Cambridge Museum of Zoology, UK
1910 - 1911
Career position - Assistant Demonstrator in Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, University of Cambridge
c. 1911
Education - Master of Arts (MA), King's College Cambridge
1911
Career position - Assistant Naturalist to the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries in England
1912 - 1913
Career position - North Sea expedition assistant for the Western Australian Museum
November 1913
Career position - Percy Sladen Trust Expedition to the Abrolhos Islands
1915 - 1920
Career position - Keeper of Biology at the Western Australian Museum
1916 - 1919
Career position - Science Abstractor on secondment to the Advisory Council of Scientific and Industrial Research
1918 - ?
Career position - Member of the Checklist Committee of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists' Union
1920 - 1924
Career position - Biologist with the Commonwealth Prickly Pear Board in Brisbane
1921
Career position - Corresponding Fellow, American Ornithologists' Union
1924 - 1925
Career position - Editor of The Emu journal
1926
Career position - American Museum of Natural History
1928
Career position - Birds of the Ocean - the first ornithological field guide, published in New York
1929 - 1930
Career position - Superintendent of the Tees Estuary survey
1930 - 1945
Career position - Director of the Oxford Bird Census (later Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology), UK
1939
Career position - Fellow, Royal Australasian Ornithologists' Union
1945 - 1955
Career position - Librarian at the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology
1947
Award - Naming honour of the Alexander Library in the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornothology
1955
Award - Tucker Medal, British Trust for Ornithology
1959
Award - Union Medal, British Ornithologists' Union

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

Western Australian Museum

  • Wilfred Backhouse Alexander - Records, 1911 - 1920, D.A2/76; Western Australian Museum. Details

Published resources

Books

  • Alexander, W. B., The prickly pear in Australia (Melbourne: Executive Committee of the Advisory Council of Science and Industry, 1919), 48 pp. Details
  • Alexander, W. B., Natural enemies of prickly pear and their introduction into Australia (Melbourne: Government Printer, 1925), 80 pp. Details

Journal Articles

  • 'W. B. Alexander: Obituary', Western Australian Naturalist, 10 (6) (1967), 129-148. Details
  • Alexander, W. B., 'Obituary: Mr. Richard Helms', Proceedings of the Royal Society of Western Australia, 49 (1914). Details
  • Alexander, W. B., 'History of Zoology in Western Australia. Part II. 1791-1829', Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia, 1 (1914), 83-149. Details
  • Alexander, W. B., 'The history of zoology in Western Australia, part 1: discoveries in the 17th century', Journal of the Natural History and Science Society of Western Australia, 5 (1915), 49-64. Details
  • Alexander, W. B., 'The history of zoology in Western Australia, part 3: 1829 - 1840', Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia, 3 (1918), 37-69. Details

Resources

See also

  • Currie, George; Graham, John, The Origins of CSIRO: Science and the Commonwealth Government, 1901-1926 (Melbourne: CSIRO, 1966), 203 pp, https://ebooks.publish.csiro.au/content/origins-csiro. pages 74. Details
  • Johnstone, R. E., 'A history of ornithology at the Western Australian Museum' in Contributions to the History of Australasian Ornithology, Davis, William E.; Recher, Harry E.; Boles, Walter E.; and Jackson, Jerome A., eds (Cambridge, Mass.: Nuttall Ornithological Club, 2008), pp. 165-98. Details
  • Robin, Libby, The Flight of the Emu: a Hundred Years of Australian Ornithology 1901-2001 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001), 492 pp. Details

McCarthy, G.J. & Rosanne Walker

Created: 20 October 1993, Last modified: 26 March 2007

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