Albert Gunther

Albert Günther was a German-born British zoologist, ichthyologist and herpetologist, born in Esslingen in Swabia on 3 October 1830. He is ranked the second most productive reptile taxonomist, with more than 340 reptile species described, and the third most productive fish taxonomist, with about 1600 fish species described. He studied at the University of Tübingen and graduated in medicine in 1858, after taking up work at the British Museum in 1857, where his first task was to classify 2000 snake specimens. The major work of his life was the eight-volume Catalogue of Fishes, published from 1859 to 1870. After 1875 he served as Keeper of Zoology at the Natural History Museum until 1895, and he showed in a landmark paper that the tuatara is not a lizard but the only living member of a separate group of reptiles, the Rhynchocephalia. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1867 and died on 1 February 1914.