Person
Martensz, Peter Nigel (1942 - 2014)
- Born
- 10 October 1942
Colombo, Ceylon - Died
- 19 November 2014
Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia - Occupation
- Botanist
Summary
Peter Martensz, whose family had moved to Australia by the time he was ten years old, worked for the CSIRO Division of Wildlife Research and Tree Seed Centre (Division of Forest Research) from 1963 to 1992. He participated in many field trips around north and north-east Australia as a seed collector. Martensz published a number of papers on the flora of these areas. His aptitude for computer applications led to him developing databases for the cataloguing of seed collections for CSIRO. Voucher specimens collected by him on several outback stations were critical in determining food preferences for both native and stock animals. After being made redundant in 1992 he established his own biological editing company. He was later contracted as an editor for the Australia's Virtual Herbarium (AVH) project, based at the Australian National Herbarium (Canberra), and added or edited over 40,000 records. The Australian National Herbarium holds over 5,000 of Martensz's collections, particularly in the families Chenopodiaceae, Poaceae, Fabaceae, Asteraceae and Malvaceae.
Details
Chronology
- 1963 - 1975
- Career event - Employed by the CSIRO Division of Wildlife Ecology
- 1976 - 1992
- Career event - Employed by the Tree Seed Centre, CSIRO Division of Forest Research
Related entries
Published resources
Journal Articles
- Nightingale, Maggie and Fagg, Murray, 'Peter Nigel Martensz', Australasian Systematic Botany Society Newsletter, 161 (2014), 47-9. Details
Helen Cohn
Last modified: 3 August 2016