| Activity | Museum Staff: appointed attendant in Department of Botany 1 Nov 1946; assistant experimental officer 1949; experimental officer 1953. Retired 1983
General Herbarium.
He was born in Sutton, Surrey, served in the Royal Navy in WWII in the Indian Ocean area and joined the Botany Department in 1946. After many years of working in the Museum, he retired in 1983. His work covered the flora of Tristan da Cunha and he was an authority on the landing places of James Cook’s first voyage - in the pre Beaglehole era. He collaborated with the present writer on Nature’s Investigator … which was the first publication of the Australian diary (1801-1805) of Robert Brown (the Botany Department’s first Keeper). The Thackray Medal of the Society for the History of Natural History was awarded jointly to the compilers in 2001.
Prior to his death Eric had studied for some years the collections brought back from the west coast of north America and south western Australia by the Scottish-born naturalist Archibald Menzies on the voyage of Capt. George Vancouver in the 1790s. |