Alfred Newton

Alfred Newton was an English zoologist and ornithologist, born on 11 June 1829 at Les Délices, a chateau near Geneva, the fifth son of William Newton of Elveden Hall in Suffolk. He was Professor of Comparative Anatomy at Cambridge University from 1866 to 1907. Among his many publications were a four-volume Dictionary of Birds, published from 1893 to 1896, and the ornithology entries in the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, and he was an editor of the journal Ibis from 1865 to 1870. Birds were an abiding interest from his youth, which he shared with his younger brother Edward, and the warrens, woods and fenland of the Breck and the valley of the Little Ouse were his training ground as a naturalist. He founded the British Ornithologists Union and in 1900 was awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society and the Gold Medal of the Linnean Society. He died on 7 June 1907.