Everything about Gerard Krefft totally explained
Johann Ludwig (Louis) Gerard Krefft (
17 February 1830 –
19 February 1881), one of
Australia's first and greatest
zoologists and
palaeontologists. In addition to many scientific papers, his books include
The Snakes of Australia,
A Catalogue of the Minerals and Rocks in the Australian Museum and
A Short Guide to the Australian Fossil Remains in the Australian Museum. He published the scientific description of the
Queensland Lungfish, a fascinating "living
fossil".
Krefft was born in
Brunswick,
Germany. He was educated in his native town, and as a youth was much interested in art and wished to study painting. He was, however, placed in a mercantile house and about 1850 emigrated to
New York. Krefft arrived in Australia in
1852 and worked in the
Victorian goldfields for some years before joining
William Blandowski's
explorations on the
Murray River.
He arrived in
Sydney in 1860 and was appointed Assistant Curator of the
Australian Museum. In
1864 he was appointed Director. In 1864 he published a
Catalogue of Mammalia in the Collection of the Australian Museum, and in 1865, as a pamphlet,
Two Papers on the Vertebrata of the Lower Murray and Darling and on the Snakes of Sydney. These papers had been read before the Philosophical Society of New South Wales and, though the title didn't show it, a third paper on the
Aborigines of the Lower Murray and Darling was included in the publication. In 1869 Krefft brought out
The Snakes of Australia and in 1871
The Mammals of Australi, both with plates. His Catalogue of the
Minerals and Rocks in the Collection of the Australian Museum was published in 1873.
Krefft was fired in 1874. He was carried in his chair to the door of the Museum and thrown into the street. He had fallen foul of the Trustees because he accused some of them of using the museums resources to augment their private collections. They responded by accusing him of drunkenness, falsifying attendance records and even allowing the sale of dirty postcards. He subsequently brought an action against one of the trustees and obtained a verdict for £250. The judge held that Krefft was a superior officer under government, and that no one had power to remove him but the governor with the advice of the executive council. Subsequently parliament passed a vote of £1000 to be applied in satisfaction of Krefft's claims. In 1877 he began the publication of
Krefft's Nature in Australia, a popular journal for the discussion of questions of natural history, but it quickly ceased publication. He was a member of many scientific societies, and contributed papers to the
Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London and other scientific and popular journals. Some of these were printed separately as pamphlets.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Gerard Krefft'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://gerard_krefft.totallyexplained.com">Gerard Krefft Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
