Person

Fuhrer, Bruce Alexander (1930 - 2023)

OAM

Born
31 December 1930
Woolhara, New South Wales, Australia
Died
31 March 2023
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Occupation
Botanist, Naturalist and Photographer

Summary

Bruce Fuhrer was one of Australia's foremost nature photographers. From an early age he was interested in natural history; he combined this with his professional career which began when he opened a photography business in Portland, Victoria. Fuhrer specialised in cryptogams and fungi, not only photographing them but discovering new species and publishing descriptions of many liverworts. Four fungi and two liverworts were named in his honour. In 1971 Fuhrer joined Monash University as a Technical Officer. During his 25 years at Monash he built substantial collection of colour transparencies of cryptogams, supplemented by voucher specimens. Fuhrer was a keen member of field naturalist's clubs throughout his life. These included the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria, of which he became an Honorary Member in 2001, and the Portland, Ringwood and Basin Field Naturalists Clubs. Other groups of which he was a member were the Royal Australasian Ornithological Union (later Birdlife Australia), and the Victorian national Parks Association. Fuhrer's published output, as photographer or co-author, was substantial. His books ranged from Australian algae and cryptogams to works on the flora of the Australian states. A number of these were issued in several editions. Fuhrer's personal herbarium and photographic collection, together with manuscripts, are in the National Herbarium of Victoria.

Skip to

Details

Chronology

1955
Career event - Established business as photographer, Portland, Victoria
1957
Career event - Joined Portland Field Naturalists Club
1957
Career event - Founded Portland Camera Club
1960 - 1963
Career position - Member, Mt Richmond National Park Committee of Management
1961 - 2001
Career position - Member, Field Naturalists Club of Victoria
1964 - 1969
Career position - Member of Council, Field Naturalists Club of Victoria
1971 - 1996
Career position - Technical Officer (Later Senior Technical Officer), Department of Botany and Zoology, Monash University
1978 - 2023
Award - Life Member, Ringwood Field Naturalists Club
1986 - 2023
Award - Life Member, Basin Field Naturalists Club
1988
Award - MSc honoris causa, Monash University
1989
Award - Australian Natural History Medallion, Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria
1995 - 1998
Career position - Honorary Associate, National Herbarium of Victoria
2001 - 2023
Award - Honorary Member, Field Naturalists Club of Victoria
2009
Award - Andrew Gibson Natural Medallion, Australian Photographic Society
2011
Award - Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for service to conservation and the environment as an amateur naturalist and botanical photographer

Related Corporate Bodies

Published resources

Books

  • Cole, Mary, Fuhrer, Bruce and Holland, Albert, A field guide to the common genera of gilled fungi in Australia (mushrooms and toadstools) (Melbourne: Inkata Press, 1978). Details
  • Duncan, Betty D. and Isaacs, Golda, photographs by Fuhrer, Bruce, Ferns and allied plants of Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia: with distribution maps for the Victorian species (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1986), 258 pp. Details
  • Jarman, S. J. and Fuhrer, B. A., Mosses and liverworts of rainforests in Tasmania and south-eastern Australia ([Hobart?]: East Melbourne: CSIRO: Forestry Tasmania, 1995), 134 pp. Details
  • Kantvilas, G. and Jarman, S. J.; photographs by Fuhrer, Bruce, Lichens of rainforest in Tasmania and south-eastern Australia (Canberra: Australian Biological Resources Study, 1999), 212 pp. Details
  • Marks, G.C.; Fuhrer, B.A.; and Walters, N.E.M., Tree Diseases in Victoria (Melbourne, Vic.: Forests Commission, Victoria, 1982), 149 pp. Details
  • Willis, J. H., Fuhrer, B. A. and Rotherham, E. R., Flowers and plants of Victoria (Terrey Hills, N.S.W.: Reed, 1975), 304 pp. Details

Edited Books

  • Christianson, I. G.; Clayton, M. N.; and Allender, B. M.: photographs by Bruce Fuhrer eds, Seaweeds of Australia (Sydney: Reed, 1981), 112 pp. Details

Journal Articles

  • Dell, Matt, Cargill, Christine and May, Tom, 'Bruce Alexander Fuhrer OAM 31 December 1930 - 31 March 2023', Victorian naturalist, 140 (5) (2023), 148-51. Details
  • Houghton, Sheila, 'Australian Natural History Medallion 1989: Bruce A. Fuhrer', Victorian naturalist, 106 (6) (1989), 260-1. Details

See also

Helen Cohn

Created: 21 May 2024

EOAS ID: biogs/P007385b.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/P007385b.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