19 Facts About Tom Iredale

Tom Iredale was an English-born ornithologist and malacologist who had a long association with Australia, where he lived for most of his life.

Tom Iredale was an autodidact who never went to university and lacked formal training.

Tom Iredale was apprenticed to a pharmacist from 1899 to 1901, and used to go bird watching and egg collecting in the Lake District with fellow chemist William Carruthers Lawrie.

Tom Iredale became a clerk in a New Zealand company at Christchurch.

In 1908 Tom Iredale joined an expedition to the Kermadec Islands and lived for ten months on these remote islands northeast of New Zealand.

Tom Iredale survived by shooting and eating the objects of his study.

Tom Iredale collected molluscs on the island and developed an interest in malacology.

Tom Iredale returned to Britain and became a freelance worker at the British Museum of Natural History in London.

Tom Iredale wrote much of the text, but the work was credited to Mathews.

Tom Iredale continued his work in natural history under the patronage of wealthy naturalists such as Charles Rothschild, for whom he travelled to Hungary to collect fleas from birds.

Tom Iredale married Lilian Marguerite Medland on 8 June 1923.

Tom Iredale illustrated several of his books and became one of Australia's finest bird artists.

Tom Iredale returned to Australia in 1923 and was elected a member of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union in the same year.

Tom Iredale took up a position as a conchologist at the Australian Museum in Sydney.

Tom Iredale was originally appointed to assist Joyce Allan, the temporary head of the Conchology department.

Tom Iredale worked tirelessly on publications on shells, birds, ecology and zoogeography.

Tom Iredale lectured frequently and wrote many popular scientific articles in newspapers.

Tom Iredale was an Honorary Associate from his retirement in 1944 until his death.

Tom Iredale recorded a list of around on thousand systematic names he had published by 1932, chronologically arranged and indexed to the relevant work, this unpublished list became the basis for the one produced for the Australian Museum and published in The Australian zoologist.