On 27 May 2010, at 11:12, Alberto Masi wrote:
Dear Mr Bo,
on page 23 of the book "Whose Bird?" by Bo Beolens and Michael Watkins, Yale University Press, is written. . ."" The bird may have been named for him (Wilfred Backhouse Alexander 1885-1965) or his wife Annie Montague Alexander (1867-1950) "". I ask, did not find this important information in any biography of Annie Montague Alexander, if the news (wife of Wilfred Backhouse Alexander) is true !
Best.
Thanks
Alberto Masi,
Parma - Italia
Da Fatbirder.com
Data giovedì 27 maggio 2010 12.25
A Alberto Masi
Oggetto Whose Bird?Below is an updated entry - you will see that we found it is definitely after him NOT after his wife:
boAlexander, WB
Australian Grey-headed Albatross Diomedea chrysostoma alexanderi Mathews, 1916
Northwest Australian Maned Duck Chenonetta jubata alexanderi Mathews, 1916
Kerguelen Islands Dove Prion desolata alexanderi Mathews & Iredale, 1921
Wilfred Backhouse Alexander (1885-1965) was an English zoologist. He was educated at the University of Cambridge and became Assistant Superintendent of the Cambridge Museum of Zoology in 1910, also acting at this time as an Assistant Demonstrator in Zoology and Comparative Anatomy. He was an Assistant Naturalist to the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries in 1911. He then left for Australia, where he was Assistant at the Western Australian Museum from 1912 until 1915. He accompanied Professor W J Dakin on the first Percy Sladen Trust Expedition to the Abrolhos Islands in November 1913. During the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in 1914 he travelled throughout Australia on the presidential train. He was Keeper of Biology at the Western Australian Museum from 1915 until 1920 and was seconded to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) as science abstractor between 1916 and 1919. He was biologist at the Commonwealth Prickly Pear Board in Brisbane from 1920 until 1924 and officer-in-charge from 1924 until 1925. He edited the journal ‘Emu’ between 1924 and 1925. He then worked at the American Museum of Natural History in 1926, writing his best-known work Birds of the Ocean, which was first published in New York in 1928. This work is generally recognised to be the first ornithological field guide. Alexander was superintendent of the Tees Estuary survey from 1929 to 1930. He became Director of the Oxford Bird Census (later to be constituted as the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology, the EGI) in 1930 and stayed on until 1945. He then became Librarian at the EGI from 1945 for 10 years. The Alexander Library at the EGI was named after him in 1947. He was elected as a Corresponding Fellow of the American Ornithologists’ Union in 1921 and as a Fellow of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists’ Union in 1939 and was awarded the Tucker Medal of the British Trust for Ornithology in 1955 and the Union Medal of the British Ornithologists’ Union in 1959.
Cronologia Ornitologica
by Alberto Masi