George Shaw (biologist)

George Kearsley Shaw (1751 to 1813) was an English botanist and zoologist. Born at Bierton in Buckinghamshire, he was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, took his M.A. in 1772 and practised as a medical practitioner before becoming assistant lecturer in botany at the University of Oxford in 1786. He became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1789. In 1791 he became assistant keeper of the natural history department of the British Museum and was made keeper in 1806; he found most of the items donated by Hans Sloane in very bad condition, and many deteriorated stuffed animals and birds had to be burnt. His Zoology of New Holland (1794) gave some of the first English descriptions, with scientific names, of Australian animals, and in 1799 he published the first scientific description of the platypus in The Naturalist's Miscellany. He also described many new reptiles and amphibians.