Peter Grubb (1942 – 23 December 2006) was a British zoologist. He often collaborated withColin Groves and described several new mammal taxa includingFelis margarita harrisoni (a subspecies of thesand cat), theBornean yellow muntjac, theNigerian white-throated guenon,Cephalophus nigrifrons hypoxanthus, thewhite-legged duiker,Cephalophus silvicultor curticeps,Cephalophus weynsi lestradei, theKashmir musk deer, and theNiger Delta red colobus.
Grubb was born in Dumfries,Dumfriesshire, but moved to EalingWest London when he was a small child. His father William Grubb was a research chemist at theImperial Chemical Industries and later worked as a science teacher in London. His mother Anne Sirutis was a school teacher fromLithuania. His younger sister Katrina is an artist.
After hisBSc graduation in Zoology at theUniversity College London Grubb was research assistant in theWellcome Institute of the Zoological Society of London. In the 1960s he went toSt Kilda for three years where he studiedSoay sheep for hisPhD thesis. For this work he received a special mention as runner-up for the Thomas Henry Huxley Award of the Zoological Society of London in 1968. In the same year he took part in theRoyal Society expedition toAldabra where he worked particularly on theAldabra giant tortoises. Subsequently, he lectured at theUniversity of Ghana for twelve years. His main research field was the taxonomy and distribution of African mammals.
In 1993 and 2005 he wrote theArtiodactyla andPerissodactyla sections for the publicationMammal Species of the World. He also contributed toMammalian Species, the journal of theAmerican Society of Mammalogists. He published checklists of West African mammals (for instance for Sierra Leone, Gambia, and Ghana) and wrote several revisions, including on warthogs, gerenuks and buffalo. In 1993 he co-edited the IUCN publicationPigs, Peccaries, and Hippos: Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan.
In 1977 botanistFrancis Raymond Fosberg named thePortulaca varietyPortulaca mauritiensis var. grubbii fromCosmoledo after Grubb[1] which is now included inPortulaca mauritiensis var. aldabrensis.[2]
In June 2006 he was honored with theStamford Raffles Award of theZoological Society of London.[3]
After two surgeries Peter Grubb died fromcancer in December 2006. He was married and had two children.
