27 Facts About Gerard Krefft

Johann Ludwig Gerard Krefft, was an Australian artist, draughtsman, scientist, and natural historian who served as the curator of the Australian Museum for 13 years.

Gerard Krefft was born on 17 February 1830 in the Duchy of Brunswick, the son of William Gerard Krefft, a confectioner, and his wife Johanna.

Gerard Krefft married Annie McPhail, later Mrs Robert Macintosh, on 6 February 1869.

Gerard Krefft arrived in Melbourne, from New York, on 15 October 1852, on the Revenue, and worked in the Victorian goldfields "with much success" for some five years.

Gerard Krefft contributed examples of his drawings to the Victorian Industrial Society's Exhibition, in Melbourne, in February 1858.

Gerard Krefft then took command of the expedition until it finally returned at the end of November 1857.

Gerard Krefft served as the curator of the Museum of Natural History, which had opened on 9 March 1854, was open to the public for six hours daily, and was located in the Assay Office in La Trobe Street, Melbourne.

Gerard Krefft returned to Australia from his sojourn in Germany, with brief stays en route at the Cape of Good Hope and Adelaide, arriving in Sydney on 6 May 1860.

Gerard Krefft, who had returned to Australia in 1860 "with a comprehensive knowledge of the new approaches being adopted in Europe to the role and purpose of museums", was "a dynamic figure who vigorously researched, wrote about and promoted the [Australian] Museum's collections".

Gerard Krefft served as curator at a time of significant culture change, both in terms of the place of science and scientific standards within the community, and in terms of the embedded assumptions, foundation principles, and experimental strategies of science itself.

Gerard Krefft, who was "devoted to the museum's interests", rather than to those of the trustees, had already begun separating his own museum's research collections from its exhibition collections, and had already adopted many of Gray's measures by the early 1860s.

Gerard Krefft actively promoted the concept of the museum as a popular institution appealing to a broader audience: that is, an establishment designed to provide experiences that engage, entertain, and educate all ages, economic groups, education levels, and social classes, as well as being a place for the collection, preservation, and display of specimens, and the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge.

Many of those annual reports contain specific, urgent appeals for additional funding to allow the publication of various items, created by Gerard Krefft, that were, at the time, complete and printer-ready.

An extended, critical editorial in The Empire in 1868 noted that, although Gerard Krefft had a "voluminous catalogue of the specimens contained in the library arranged for the printer" it appeared that "there are no funds to enable the trustees to carry out this necessary matter".

On each occasion, Gerard Krefft expressed his view that Forster's claim of the existence of such a salmon was entirely mistaken.

Gerard Krefft immediately announced his discovery in a letter to the Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, published on 18 January 1870 ; and, in doing so, he named the specimen after William Foster: Ceratodus Forsteri.

Gerard Krefft's discovery was specifically mentioned within the comments of Australian Museum trustee Rev William Branwhite Clarke on the mineralogical and geological exhibits at the 1870 Intercolonial Exhibition, held in Sydney; and, moreover, it was of such significance that the Exhibition's report included a poem, highlighting Gerard Krefft's discovery, written by Clarke himself.

Gerard Krefft's position was that the trustees, acting independently of the New South Wales government, had no right to dismiss him.

Gerard Krefft had been unable to meet the trustees' request to appear before them on the Thursday because he was unwell, and that his wife, whose difficult confinement had been attended by George Bennett, had just delivered a stillborn child, a daughter, after two days of intense labour in their residence over the Museum.

At the time of his eviction, Gerard Krefft was forcibly carried out of his apartment, refusing to move from his chair, and was unceremoniously thrown out into Macquarie street by the prizefighters.

Gerard Krefft was even accused of condoning the sale of pornographic postcards.

In contrast, Justice Faucett, noting that Gerard Krefft "[had] taken an altogether erroneous view of his position and of the powers of the trustees; and [he, Faucett was] clearly of [the] opinion that his conduct justified his dismissal", was of the opinion that a new trial should be granted.

The Government refused to pay unless Gerard Krefft renounced all other claims, which Gerard Krefft refused to do.

In December 1876 Gerard Krefft failed in his attempt to have the Supreme Court In Banco force the Colonial Treasurer to make the legislated-for payment.

Gerard Krefft failed to find new employment after his dismissal; "his reforms and discoveries were recognised by many of his contemporaries and remain on the record as important contributions to imperial and global science", and "[his] removal resulted in the impoverishment of the Natural sciences in New South Wales until the rise of inter-colonial science in the 1890s".

Gerard Krefft died in Sydney, on 18 February 1881, at the age of 51, from congestion of the lungs, "after suffering for some months past from dropsy and Bright's disease", and was buried in the churchyard of St Jude's Church of England, Randwick.

Gerard Krefft 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 which were printed separately as pamphlets.