Person

Bartholomai, Alan (1938 - 2015)

AM

Born
17 December 1938
Boonah, Queensland, Australia
Died
17 December 2015
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Occupation
Museum director and Vertebrate palaeontologist

Summary

Alan Bartholomai was Director of the Queensland Museum for 30 years and a palaeontologist renowned particularly as an authority on Cretaceous fish. As Director he oversaw the relocation of Museum, the re-establishment of the Museum's Board (in abeyance since 1907), and the creation of regional branches. He fostered research programs that significantly expanded the recording and understanding Queensland's biodiversity, palaeontological record and cultural heritage. Bartholomai's wider role in Australia's museums included serving on such bodies as the Advisory Committee on Illegal Movement of Cultural Property and the committee for establishing the National Maritime Museum of Australia. In his palaeontological research Bartholomai worked with colleagues on Cenozoic marsupials, fossil turtles, and Triassic vertebrates from Western Australia. With Ralph Molnar he described the Australian dinosaur Muttaburrasaurus. In retirement he returned to his research on the fish faunas of the Great Australian Basin. Many of the groups for which he produced major reviews had not previously been recorded from the southern hemisphere and hence provided insights into the palaeogeography of Cretaceous fish faunas.

Details

Chronology

1960
Education - Bachelor of Science (BSc), University of Queensland
1960 - 1966
Career position - Curator of Geology, Queensland Museum Curator of Geology, Queensland Museum
1966 - 1968
Career position - Research Curator (Geology), Queensland Museum
1969
Education - Master of Science (MSc), University of Queensland
1969 - 1999
Career position - Member, Council of Australian Museum Directors
1969 - 1999
Career position - Director, Queensland Museum
1970
Career position - President, Royal Society of Queensland
1973
Education - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Queensland
1985 - 1987
Career position - Chairman, Council of Australian Museum Directors
1994 - 1999
Career position - Member of the Board, CRC for Tropical Rainforest and Ecology and Management
1999 - 2015
Career position - Emeritus Director, Queensland Museum
2000
Award - Queensland Museum Medal
2012
Award - Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for service to the advancement of science, particularly through administrative roles with the Queensland Museum

Related Awards

Related Corporate Bodies

Published resources

Journal Articles

  • 'Congratulations: Australia Day honours', TAG: the Australian geologist, 162 (2012), 40. Details
  • Anon, 'Obituary of Dr Alan Bartholomai 1938 - 2015', Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland, 122 (2017), 113. Details
  • Rozefelds, Andrew C. F., 'In memoriam Alan Bartholomai (1938 - 2015)', Memoirs of the Queensland Museum: Nature, 60 (2017), 119-31. Details

Resources

Helen Cohn

EOAS ID: biogs/P005895b.htm

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

Published by Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2024 November (Ballambar - Gariwerd calendar - early summer - season of butterflies)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#ballambar
For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P005895b.htm

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260