George Robert Gray
Encyclopedia
George Robert Gray FRS (8 July 1808 - 6 May 1872) was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 zoologist
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...

 and author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

, and head of the ornithological section of the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

, now the Natural History Museum
Natural History Museum
The Natural History Museum is one of three large museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London, England . Its main frontage is on Cromwell Road...

, in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 for forty-one years. He was the younger brother of John Edward Gray
John Edward Gray
John Edward Gray, FRS was a British zoologist. He was the elder brother of George Robert Gray and son of the pharmacologist and botanist Samuel Frederick Gray ....

 and the son of the botanist Samuel Frederick Gray
Samuel Frederick Gray
Samuel Frederick Gray was a British botanist, mycologist, and pharmacologist. He was the father of the zoologists John Edward Gray and George Robert Gray.-Background:...

.

George Gray's most important publication was his Genera of Birds (1844-49), illustrated by David William Mitchell
David William Mitchell
David William Mitchell was an English zoologist and illustrator.Mitchell was secretary of the Zoological Society of London from 1847 to 1859, and then director of the Jardin d'Acclimatation in Paris, where he died. Previously he had been the illustrator of George Robert Gray's Genera of Birds, and...

 and Joseph Wolf
Joseph Wolf
Joseph Wolf was a German artist who specialized in natural history illustration. He moved to the British Museum in 1848 and became the choice of illustrator for numerous explorers and collectors. He depicted animals accurately in life-like postures and has been considered one of the great pioneers...

, which included 46,000 references.

Biography

He was born in Chelsea
Chelsea, London
Chelsea is an area of West London, England, bounded to the south by the River Thames, where its frontage runs from Chelsea Bridge along the Chelsea Embankment, Cheyne Walk, Lots Road and Chelsea Harbour. Its eastern boundary was once defined by the River Westbourne, which is now in a pipe above...

, London to Samuel Frederick Gray, naturalist and pharmacologist. He was educated at Merchant Taylor's School.

Gray started at the British Museum as Assistant Keeper of the Zoology
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...

 Branch in 1831.
He began by cataloguing insect
Insect
Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...

s, and published an Entomology of Australia (1833) and contributed the entomogical section to an English edition of Georges Cuvier
Georges Cuvier
Georges Chrétien Léopold Dagobert Cuvier or Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier , known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist...

's Animal Kingdom. Gray described many species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 of Lepidoptera
Lepidoptera
Lepidoptera is a large order of insects that includes moths and butterflies . It is one of the most widespread and widely recognizable insect orders in the world, encompassing moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies, skipper butterflies, and moth-butterflies...

.

In 1833, he was a founder of what became the Royal Entomological Society of London
Royal Entomological Society of London
The Royal Entomological Society of London is devoted to insect study. It has a major national and international role in disseminating information about insects and improving communication between entomologists....

.

Gray's original description of the Gray's Grasshopper Warbler
Gray's Grasshopper Warbler
Gray's Grasshopper Warbler, Locustella fasciolata is a species of grass warbler in the family Locustellidae; it was formerly included in the "Old World warbler" assemblage.-Distribution and habitat:...

, which was named for him, appeared in 1860. The specimen had been collected by Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist...

 in the Moluccas.

Works

  • The Entomology of Australia, in a series of Monographs. Part I. The Monograph of the Genus Phasma
    Phasmatidae
    Phasmatidae is a family of the stick insects . They belong to the superfamily Anareolatae of suborder Verophasmatodea.Like many of their relatives, Phasmatidae are capable of regenerating limbs and commonly reproduce by parthenogenesis...

    . London.
  • 1831 The Zoological Miscellany Zool. Miscell. (1): [1] 1-40
  • 1846 Descriptions and Figures of some new Lepidopterous Insects chiefly from Nepal. London, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans.
  • 1852 Catalogue of Lepidopterous Insects in the British Museum. Part 1. Papilionidae. [1853 Jan], "1852" iii + 84pp., 13pls.
  • 1871 A fasciculus of the Birds of China. London, Taylor and Francis.
  • with Richard Bowdler Sharpe
    Richard Bowdler Sharpe
    Richard Bowdler Sharpe was an English zoologist.-Biography:Sharpe was born in London and studied at Brighton College, The King's School, Peterborough and Loughborough Grammar School. At the age of sixteen he went to work for Smith & Sons in London...

    , The Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Erebus
    HMS Erebus (1826)
    HMS Erebus was a Hecla-class bomb vessel designed by Sir Henry Peake and constructed by the Royal Navy in Pembroke dockyard, Wales in 1826. The vessel was named after the dark region in Hades of Greek mythology called Erebus...

    & HMS Terror. Birds of New Zealand., 1875. The revised edition of Gray (1846) (1875).

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK