Gregory Macalister Mathews CBE

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...

FZS FLS (10 September 1876 – 27 March 1949) was an

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

n-born amateur

ornithologist Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the "methodological study and consequent knowledge of birds with all that relates to them." Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and th ...

who spent most of his later life in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

Life

He was born in Biamble in

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

the son of Robert H. Mathews. He was educated at The King's School, Parramatta. Mathews made his fortune in

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the econom ...

shares, and moved to

in 1902. In 1910 he was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

. His proposers were William Eagle Clarke,

Ramsay Heatley Traquair Ramsay Heatley Traquair FRSE FRS (30 July 1840 – 22 November 1912) was a Scottish naturalist and palaeontologist who became a leading expert on fossil fish. Traquair trained as a medical doctor, but his thesis was on aspects of fish anatom ...

, John Alexander Harvie-Brown and William Evans.

Ornithology

Mathews was a controversial figure in Australian ornithology. He was responsible for bringing

trinomial nomenclature In biology, trinomial nomenclature refers to names for taxa below the rank of species. These names have three parts. The usage is different in zoology and botany. In zoology In zoological nomenclature, a trinomen (), trinominal name, or ternar ...

into local taxonomy, however he was regarded as an extreme splitter. He recognised large numbers of subspecies on scant evidence and few notes. The extinct Lord Howe Pigeon was described by Mathews in 1915, using a painting as a guide. At the time, he named it ''Raperia godmanae'' for

Alice Mary Godman Dame Alice Mary Godman, ( Chaplin; 24 June 1868 – 3 October 1944) was a British charity worker, serving as Deputy President of the British Red Cross Society. She also had an interest in Girl Guiding and served as County Commissioner for Girl ...

. His approach drew a hostile response from

Archibald James Campbell Archibald James Campbell (18 February 1853 – 11 September 1929) was an Australian civil servant in the Victorian (later Australian) government Customs Service. However, his international reputation rests on his expertise as an amateur ornit ...

, a leading Australian figure in birds at the time. He later began splitting genera.

Dominic Serventy Dominic Louis Serventy (28 March 1904 – 8 August 1988) was a Perth -based Western Australian ornithologist. He was president of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU) 1947–1949. He assisted with the initial organisation of the B ...

foretold that although a great many of these subspecies ceased to be recognised, future research would have to resort to the use of some of them if and when evidence supported their distinct status. He was Chairman of the British Ornithologists' Club from 1935 to 1938.Bull. B.O.C. Vol. 58 He was made CBE in 1939 for his services to ornithology.Bull. B.O.C. Vol. 59 Mathews described ''M. s. musgravei'', currently recognized as a subspecies of the

splendid fairy-wren The splendid fairywren (''Malurus splendens'') is a passerine bird in the Australasian wren family, Maluridae. It is also known simply as the splendid wren or more colloquially in Western Australia as the blue wren. The splendid fairywren is fou ...

, in 1922 as a new species of bird. In 1939 he was elected a

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the

Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union The Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU), now part of BirdLife Australia, was Australia's largest non-government, non-profit, bird conservation organisation. It was founded in 1901 to promote the study and conservation of the native b ...

, and served as its president 1946–1947. Mathews built up collection of 30,000 bird skins and a library of 5,000 books on ornithology. He donated his ornithological library to the

National Library of Australia The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "maint ...

in 1939. In 1939, Matthews donated a small collection of Aboriginal ethnographic items from Australia to the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

.British Museum collection
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Family

He married Mrs Marian Wynne, a widow. He died in

Winchester Winchester is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government Districts of England, district, at the western end of the South Downs Nation ...

on 27 March 1949.

Publications

Mathews contributed numerous papers to the ornithological literature, especially on avian

taxonomy Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification. A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...

and

nomenclature Nomenclature (, ) is a system of names or terms, or the rules for forming these terms in a particular field of arts or sciences. The principles of naming vary from the relatively informal conventions of everyday speech to the internationally ag ...

, as well as founding, funding, editing and being the principal contributor to the journal ''

The Austral Avian Record ''The Austral Avian Record'', with the subtitle ''a scientific journal devoted primarily to the study of the Australian avifauna'', was an occasional journal produced in five volumes between 1912 and 1927. It was founded, funded and edited by Au ...

''. Monographic or book-length works authored or coauthored by him include: * 1908 – ''The Handlist of the Birds of Australia''. (Based on ''A Handlist of Birds'' by Bowdler Sharpe). * 1910–1927 – '' The Birds of Australia'' Witherby: London. (12 volumes, assisted by

Tom Iredale Tom Iredale (24 March 1880 – 12 April 1972) was an English-born ornithologist and malacologist who had a long association with Australia, where he lived for most of his life. He was an autodidact who never went to university and lacked forma ...

). * 1912 – ''The Reference List of the Birds of Australia''. (''Novitates Zoologicae'', 18 January 1912). * 1913 – ''A List of the Birds of Australia''. Witherby: London. * 1920 – ''The Name List of the Birds of Australia''. * 1921 – ''A Manual of the Birds of Australia. Volume I: Orders Casuarii to Columbae''. Witherby: London. (With Tom Iredale. Only one volume published of a projected four). * 1924 – ''The Check-List of the Birds of Australia''. Witherby: London. (Comprising Supplements 1-3 of ''The Birds of Australia''). * 1925 – ''The Bibliography of the Birds of Australia''. Witherby: London. (Comprising Supplements 4 and 5 of ''The Birds of Australia''). * 1927 – ''Systema Avium Australasianarum. a Systematic List of the Birds of the Australasian Region''. BOU: London. (2 volumes). * 1928 – ''The Birds of Norfolk and Lord Howe Islands and the Australian South Polar Quadrant''. Witherby: London. * 1931 – ''A List of the Birds of Australasia, Including New Zealand, Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands, and the Australasian Antarctic Quadrant''. * 1936 – ''A Supplement to the Birds of Norfolk and Lord Howe Islands to which is Added those Birds of New Zealand not figured by Buller''. Witherby: London. * 1942 – ''Birds and Books: the Story of the Mathews Ornithological Library''. Verity Hewitt Bookshop: Canberra. * 1943 – ''Notes on the Order Procellariiformes''. (With Edward Hallstrom). * 1946 – ''A Working List of Australian Birds, including the Australian Quadrant and New Zealand''. Shepherd Press: Sydney.

References

* Robin, Libby. (2001). ''The Flight of the Emu: a hundred years of Australian ornithology 1901-2001''. Carlton, Vic. Melbourne University Press.

External links

Find G.M. Mathews in Libraries Australia
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Illustrations from ''The birds of Australia''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mathews, Gregory 1876 births 1949 deaths Australian ornithologists Australian nature writers Taxon authorities Australian book and manuscript collectors