George Albert BoulengerFRS[1] (19 October 1858 – 23 November 1937) was a Belgian-Britishzoologist who described and gave scientific names to over 2,000 new animal species, chiefly fish, reptiles, and amphibians. Boulenger was also an activebotanist during the last 30 years of his life, especially in the study ofroses.[2]
Boulenger developed a lifelong passion for animals, which led him to study zoology at the University. During his university years, he gained recognition at the Musee d'Histoire Naturelle, Brussels and was hired as an assistant naturalist in 1880. Two years later, he joined theBritish Museum's Department of Zoology as a first-class assistant, under the leadership ofDr. Gunther. Boulenger held this position until his retirement in 1920.[3]
According to biographical accounts, he was incredibly methodical and had an amazing memory that enabled him to remember every specimen and scientific name he ever saw. He also had extraordinary powers of writing, seldom made a second draft of anything he wrote, and his manuscripts showed but few corrections before going to the publisher.
Boulenger also played theviolin, could speak French, German, and English apart from reading Spanish, Italian and a bit of Russian. As a zoologist, he also had a working knowledge of both Greek and Latin.
By 1921, Boulenger had published 875 papers[1] totaling more than 5,000 pages, as well as 19 monographs on fishes, amphibians, and reptiles. The list of his publications and its index of species covers 77 printed pages.
He described 1,096 species of fish, 556 species of amphibians, and 872 species of reptiles. He was famous for his monographs on amphibians,lizards and other reptiles, and fishes, for example, his monographs on the fishes ofAfrica.
In 1897, KingLeopold II of Belgium started to recruit naturalists to help create theCongo museum. Boulenger was named chairman for this commission.
His main discovery in 1921 was a strange fish from theCongo. It was eyeless and lackedpigmentation. He recognized it as new and unrelated to any extant epigean (eyed, surface) species of Africa. He wrote a brief paper describing this new species of cave fish, the first ever described from Africa. He called itCaecobarbus geertsii, fromcaeco = blind,barbus = barb, andgeertsii, honoring a mysterious person, M. Geerts, who provided him with the specimen. Today, it is known as the Congo blind barb or African blind barb.
After his retirement from the British Museum, Boulenger studiedroses and published 34 papers on botanical subjects and two volumes on the roses of Europe. He died inSaint Malo, France.
In the above lists, abinomial authority in parentheses indicates that the species was originally described in a genus other than the genus to which it is currently assigned.
^Index biographique des membres et associés de l'Académie royale de Belgique (1769–2005). p. 36.
^"boulengeri ". The Reptile Database. www.reptile-database.org.
^Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011).The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 33–35.ISBN978-1-4214-0135-5.
^Christopher Scharpf & Kenneth J. Lazara (7 September 2024)."Family GOBIONIDAE Bleeker 1863 (Freshwater Gudgeons)".The ETYFish Project Fish Name Etymology Database. Christopher Scharpf and Kenneth J. Lazara. Retrieved23 October 2024.
^Christopher Scharpf & Kenneth J. Lazara (4 October 2023)."Family CTENOLUCIIDAE Schultz 1944 (Pike Characids)".The ETYFish Project Fish Name Etymology Database. Christopher Scharpf and Kenneth J. Lazara. Retrieved23 October 2024.
^Christopher Scharpf & Kenneth J. Lazara (18 October 2024)."Family MORMYRIDAE Bonaparte 1831 (Elephantfishes)".The ETYFish Project Fish Name Etymology Database. Christopher Scharpf and Kenneth J. Lazara. Retrieved12 November 2024.
^Harmer, S. F.;Shipley, A. E., eds. (1904). "Fishes (systematic account of Teleostei) by G. A. Boulenger".The Cambridge Natural History, Vol. 7. pp. 541–727.
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