Person

Stead, David George (1877 - 1957)

FLS

Born
6 March 1877
North Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Died
1 August 1957
Watsons Bay, New South Wales, Australia
Occupation
Naturalist

Summary

David Stead was a naturalist whose initial training was as a stampmaker and compositor. From 1902 he worked nearly 20 years for the New South Wales fisheries authorities. In his work for the State Trawling Industrial Undertaking and the Rabbit Menace Enquiry his scientific approach, practical knowledge and industry were appreciated, while his proposals were less so. Stead was particularly noted as a campaigner for nature conservation and a popular scientific educator. He pioneered radio broadcasts on wildlife topics and was a prolific writer especially for newspapers and the popular press. Stead was an enthusiastic member of a number of scientific and naturalists's societies in New South Wales, including a founding member of the Wild Life Preservation Society of Australia, and member of Council of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales. Among his works were the pioneering books Fishes of Australia (1906) and The edible fishes of New South Wales (1908). In addition to his own publications, he edited the journals Australian wild life, Australian geographer and Australian naturalist. Stead's collection Australian and Malayan fish is now in the Australian Museum.

Details

Chronology

1889
Life event - Apprenticed to a stampmaker
1898 - 1957
Career position - Member, Linnean Society of New South Wales
1902 - 1910
Career position - Naturalist, New South Wales Board of Fisheries
1909
Career position - Founding Member, Wild Life Preservation Society of Australia
1915 - 1920
Career position - Manager, State Trawling Industrial Undertaking
1919 - 1921
Career position - President, Wildlife Society of Australia
1921 - 1923
Career position - Acting Director of Food Supplies, British Government in Malaya
1924 - 1929
Career position - President, Wildlife Society of Australia
1925 - 1926
Career position - Commissioner, New South Wales Rabbit Menace Enquiry

Related Corporate Bodies

Related People

Published resources

Books

  • Stead, David G., Fishes of Australia: a popular and systematic guide to the study of the wealth within our waters (Sydney: William Brooks, 1906), 278 pp. Details
  • Stead, David G., The edible fishes of New South Wales: their present importance and their potentialities (Sydney: New South Wales Department of Fisheries, 1908), 123 pp. Details
  • Stead, David G., The rabbit in Australia : history, life story, habits, effect upon Australian primary production, and best means of extermination (Sydney: Winn & Co., 1935), 108 pp. Details

Book Sections

Journal Articles

  • Stead, D. G., 'Walter Wilson Froggatt, F.R.Z.S., 1858 - 1937', Australian naturalist, 10 (1937), 1-17. Details

See also

  • Prince, J. H., The first one hundred years of the Royal Zoological Society of N.S.W. 1879 - 1979 (Sydney: Royal Zoolgical Society of New South Wales, 1979), 81 pp. Details

Helen Cohn

EOAS ID: biogs/P006861b.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/P006861b.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