Person
Mitchell, Stanley Robert (1881 - 1963)
- Born
- 12 February 1881
St Kilda, Victoria, Australia - Died
- 22 March 1963
East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia - Occupation
- Businessman and Collector
Summary
Stanley Mitchell was a geologist and mineralogist who was also an enthusiastic collector of minerals and rocks and Aboriginal artefacts. He established his own business as a gold-assayer in 1911. S. R. Mitchell & Co. Pty Ltd was as a major refiner of precious metals from the mid-1920s and from 1930 Mitchell's Abrasives Pty Ltd manufactured sandpaper using crushed glass from a nearby brewery. Mitchell's ethnological collection, now in the National Museum of Australia, was believed to be the largest private artefact collection in Australia. His pioneering Stone-age craftsmen (1949) was greeted with mixed responses. He was a long-standing honorary member of the staff of the National Museum of Victoria, which acquired his collection of approximately 2,000 mineralogical specimens after his death. Mitchell served as President of the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria and the Anthropological Society of Victoria. His manuscripts and correspondence were deposited in the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
Details
Chronology
- 1911
- Education - Geologists' Expert Certificate, from Working Men's College
- 1912
- Career event - Joined the staff of the Working Men's College
- 1917
- Career position - Foundation Member, Australian Chemical Institute
- 1931 - 1963
- Career position - Honorary Mineralogist, National Museum of Victoria
- 1934 - 1963
- Career position - Foundation Member, Anthropological Society of Victoria
- 1940 - 1943
- Career position - President, Anthropological Society of Victoria 1940, 1942 - 1943
- 1945 - 1954
- Career position - Trustee and Treasurer, National Museum of Victoria
- 1949 - 1963
- Career position - Honorary Ethnologist, National Museum of Victoria
- 1955
- Award - Australian Natural History Medallion, Field Naturalists Club of Victoria
Related entries
Published resources
Book Sections
- Lovering, J.F., 'Mitchell, Stanley Robert (1881-1963), Ethnologist, Mineralogist, Metallurgist and Businessman' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 15: 1940 - 1980 Kem-Pie, John Ritchie, ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2000), pp. 384-385. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A150447b.htm. Details
Resources
- Wikidata, http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q16750518. Details
- VIAF - Virtual International Authority File, OCLC, https://viaf.org/viaf/94873650. Details
- 'Mitchell, S R (18810212-19630322)', Trove, National Library of Australia, 2009, https://nla.gov.au/nla.party-1290456. Details
See also
- Birch, W. D.; and Henry, D. A., 'The geology collections of Museum Victoria, Melbourne', Australian Journal of Mineralogy, 6 (2) (2000), 83-91. Details
- Sutton, Pat, 'Glimpses of the past from portable wooden mineral cases', Historical Records of Australian Science, 27 (2) (2016), 103-15, https://doi.org/10.1071/HR15020. Details
Helen Cohn
Last modified: 5 December 2016