Edgar Ravenswood Waite

Edgar Ravenswood Waite (5 May 1866 – 19 January 1928) was a famous British/Australian ichthyologist, ornithologist and zoologist.

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Waite was born in England and received his scientific education at the Victoria University of Manchester. In 1888 ha was appointed sub-curator of the Leeds Museum. He was soon afterwards made curator, but in 1893 became zoologist at the Australian Museum, Sydney. He was the Fish Curator there from 1892-1906.

In 1898 he published his Popular Account of Australian Snakes. He was with the trawling expedition conducted by the Thetis and wrote the report on the fish, and he also reported on the fish trawled by the Western Australian government. He was involved in several expeditions to sub-Anatarctic islands, New Guinea, and the Australian interior. At the end of his employment at the Australian Museum, the collection contained 18,000 specimens. He was later the Curator of the Canterbury Museum in New Zealand for eight years, before accepting the Directorship at the South Australia Museum.

He was the first Australian ichthyologist to use detailed illustrations in his papers. During his career, he published about 140 papers, over half of which were on fish. His major contribution to Australian ichthyology was The Fishes of South Australia, published in 1923.

In 1926 Waite spent much time studying European and American museums. While in New York City he arranged the Australian section of a museum there. He had contracted malaria while in New Guinea and at the beginning of 1928 had a recurrence, which led to his death on 19 January 1928 while he was at Hobart attending a meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science. He was survived by a widow and a son.

Though of a somewhat retiring disposition Waite was a man of great versatility. He was a linguist and musician, could draw and paint in water-colour, was an expert modeller, had some knowledge of mechanics, and was a capable photographer. Most of these things were useful in his work as curator of a museum, and as such his reputation stood very high. As a scientist his most important work was on the vertebrates. He was a fellow of the Linnean Society from an early age, and at the time of his death was a vice-president of the Royal Society of South Australia. He contributed over 200 papers to various scientific publications.

References

• http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/about/research/waite.htm
• Serle, Percival (1949). "Waite, Edgar Ravenswood". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. 

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1949 edition of Dictionary of Australian Biography from
Project Gutenberg of Australia, which is in the public domain in Australia and the United States of America.