Philip Sclater
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Philip Lutley Sclater (November 4, 1829 - June 27, 1913) was an English lawyer and zoologist. Sclater was born at Tangier Park, Hampshire. He was educated at Winchester College and Christ Church, Oxford, where he studied scientific ornithology under Hugh Edwin Strickland.
In 1858, 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. These zoogeographic regions are still in use. He also developed the theory of Lemuria during 1864 to explain zoological coincidences relating Madagascar to India.
Sclater was the founder and editor of The Ibis, the journal of the British Ornithologists' Union. He was secretary of the Zoological Society of London from 1860 to 1903.
Among Sclater's more important books were Exotic Ornithology (1866-69) and Nomenclator Avium (1873) both with Osbert Salvin, Argentine Ornithology (1888-89) with W.H. Hudson, and The Book of Antelopes (1894-1900) with Oldfield Thomas.
His son, William Lutley Sclater, was also an ornithologist.
[edit] References
- Obituary. Ibis 1913:642-686
