13 Facts About Philip Sclater

Philip Sclater was Secretary of the Zoological Society of London for 42 years, from 1860 to 1902.

Sclater was born at Tangier Park, in Wootton St Lawrence, Hampshire, where his father William Lutley Sclater had a country house.

Philip Sclater grew up at Hoddington House where he took an early interest in birds.

Philip Sclater was educated in school at Twyford and at thirteen went to Winchester College and later Corpus Christi College, Oxford where he studied scientific ornithology under Hugh Edwin Strickland.

In 1851, Philip Sclater began to study law and was admitted a Fellow of Corpus Christi College.

In 1858, Philip Sclater published a paper in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society, setting up six zoological regions which he called the Palaearctic, Aethiopian, Indian, Australasian, Nearctic, and Neotropical.

Philip Sclater developed the theory of Lemuria during 1864 to explain zoological coincidences relating Madagascar to India.

Philip Sclater was offered a permanent position in civil service but he declined.

Philip Sclater was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1873.

Philip Sclater was the founder and first editor of The Ibis, the journal of the British Ornithologists' Union.

Philip Sclater was Secretary of the Zoological Society of London from 1860 to 1902.

Philip Sclater was briefly succeeded by his son, before the Council of the Society made a long-term appointment.

On 16 October 1862, Philip Sclater married Jane Anne Eliza Hunter Blair, daughter of Sir David Hunter-Blair, 3rd Baronet; the couple had a daughter and four sons.