Dr Arthur William Baden Powell CBE (4 April 1901 - 1 July 1987) was a New Zealand malacologist, naturalist and palaeontologist, a major influence in the study and classification of New Zealand molluscs through much of the twentieth century. "Baden" Powell was born at Wellington, New Zealand, on 4 April 1901. His schooling was in Auckland, and he trained in printing at the Elam School of Fine Arts. This training, and his interest in conchology, set him on his life's work.

Pierre André Latreille was a French entomologist. His works describing insects assigned many of the insect taxa still in use today. Latreille was born into a humble family of Brive-la-Gaillarde, Corrèze, and in 1778 entered the college Lemoine in Paris. He was ordained a priest in 1786 and then went back to Brive, where he spent all of his free time studying insects. In 1788 he returned to Paris and became active in the scientific community there, …

Martin Lister (c. 1638, Radclive, England - February 2, 1712, Epsom), English naturalist and physician, was born at Radclive, near Buckingham. He was nephew of Sir Matthew Lister, physician to Anne, queen of James I, and to Charles I. He was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, 1655, graduated in 1658/9, and was elected a fellow in 1660. He became F.R.S. in 1671. He practised medicine at York until 1683, when he removed to London.

Tom Iredale (March 24, 1880 - April 12, 1972) was an English-born ornithologist and malacologist born at Stainburn, Workington, Cumberland, who had a long association with Australia where he lived for most of his life. He was apprenticed to a pharmacist from 1899 to 1901 and used to go bird watching and egg collecting in the Lake District with fellow chemist William Carruthers Lawrie. He went on a sea voyage for his health (possibly he had tuberculosis) and, …

Eduard von Martens sometimes known as "Carl" or "Karl Eduard von Martens", was a German zoologist. Born in Stuttgart in 1831, von Martens attended universities in Tübingen, Stuttgart and Munich, graduating from the University of Tübingen in 1855. In 1860, he set off as part of an expedition to the Far East, being responsible for the zoological section. When the rest of the expedition returned to Europe in 1862, …

Peter J. Wagner (born 27 September 1964) is a paleontologist and associate Curator at the Field Museum of Natural History. He received his Ph.D. in Geophysical Sciences, from The University of Chicago in 1995. His research focuses on macroevolutionary issues, especially as regards the systematics, evolutionary dynamics, morphology, and distribution of Paleozoic Molluscs.

Samuel Stillman Berry (March 16, 1887 - 1984) was a U.S. marine zoologist specialized on cephalopods. He was born in Unity, Maine (between Waterville and Bangor), but the family home was the Winnecook Ranch in Montana, which had been founded by his father Ralph in 1880. In 1897, he moved with his mother and two cousins to Redlands, California. Berry received a B.S. (1909) from Stanford and his M.S. (1910) from Harvard.

Dr Richard Kenneth Dell was a New Zealand malacologist. He was born in Auckland. As a young boy, he took an interest in shells, collecting them from the shores of Waitemata Harbour. He even managed to start a "museum" in his backyard. He also helped curate the Auckland War Memorial Museum shell collection. Dell went to Mount Albert Grammar School and later to the Auckland University College. He took a teacher’s course at Auckland Teachers' College, …

George Brettingham Sowerby II (1812 - July 26, 1884) was a British naturalist, illustrator, and conchologist. Together with his father, George Brettingham Sowerby I, he published the "Thesaurus Conchylorium" and other illustrated works on molluscs.

Gérard Paul Deshayes was a French geologist and conchologist. He was born in Nancy, his father at that time being professor of experimental physics in the École Centrale of the Meurthe "département". He studied medicine in Strasbourg, and afterwards took the degree of "bachelier ès lettres" in Paris in 1821; but he abandoned the medical profession in order to devote himself to natural history. For some time he gave private lessons on geology, …

Heinrich Christian Friedrich Schumacher, was a Danish surgeon, botanist and professor of anatomy at the University of Copenhagen. Schumacher carried out significant research work on molluscs and assigned systematic names to many taxa.

Edgar Albert Smith (November 29, 1847 - July 22, 1916) was British zoologist. Smith was born in London. He was employed at the British Museum from 1867. He was the author of "A Guide to the Shell and Starfish Galleries" (London, 1901), with Francis Jeffrey Bell (1855-1924) and Randolph Kirkpatrick, foreword by Sir Edwin Ray Lankester. Smith studied molluscs brought back by various expeditions like those of the "HMS Challenger" (1873 to 1876), …

George Brettingham Sowerby I (1788 - July 26, 1854) was a British naturalist, illustrator, and conchologist. He was the son of James Sowerby. Together with his brother James De Carle Sowerby he continued their father's work on fossil shells, publishing the latter parts of the "Mineral Conchology of Great Britain". He published about 50 papers on molluscs and started several comprehensive, illustrated books on the subject, …

George Brettingham Sowerby III (1843 - 1921) was a British conchologist, publisher, and illustrator. He, too, worked (like his father George Brettingham Sowerby II and his grandfather George Brettingham Sowerby I) on the "Thesaurus Conchyliorium", a comprehensive, beautifully illustrated work on molluscs. He was colour blind, and thus his daughter did most of the colouring of his engravings.

Laurent-Guillaume de Koninck, Belgian palaeontologist and chemist, was born at Leuven. He studied medicine in the university of his native town, and in 1831 he became assistant in the chemical schools. He pursued the study of chemistry in Paris, Berlin and Gießen, and was subsequently engaged in teaching the science at Ghent and Liège. In 1856 he was appointed professor of chemistry in the Liège University, and he retained this post until the close of his life.

Jules François Mabille was a French malacologist who discovered several species found in the mollusc order.

Johann August Ludwig Preiss was a German-born British botanist and zoologist. Preiss was born in Herzberg am Harz, Germany. He obtained a doctorate, probably at Hamburg, then emigrated to Western Australia. He arrived at the Swan River Colony on board the "Britmart" on 4 December 1838, remaining there until January 1842; during this time he became a British subject. During his time in Western Australia, Preiss collected about 200,000 plant specimens, …

Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus (July 16, 1776 - April 2, 1827) was a German physician and naturalist. Bojanus was born at Bouxwiller in Alsace and studied at Darmstadt and the University of Jena. In 1806 he became professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Vilnius, switiching to comparative anatomy in 1824. He produced an important work on the anatomy of turtles, "Anatome Testudinis Europaeae". He was the author of several scientific discoveries, …

Colonel Richard Henry Beddome (11 May 1830 - 23 February 1911) was a British military officer in India and a naturalist. He joined the army in India in 1848 and was posted to the 42nd Madras Native Infantry In 1857 he was selected on account of his devotion to botany and natural history as an assistant to Dr Hugh Cleghorn. The first conservator of the newly formed forest department of the Madras presidency. He succeeded him in 1859 and remained Chief Conservator until 1882.

Karl Grobben (sometimes written "Carl Grobben") was an Austrian biologist, who was born on August 27 1854 in Brno, and died on April 13 1945 in Salzburg. He graduated from, and later worked at, the University of Vienna, chiefly on molluscs and crustaceans. He was also the editor of a new edition of Claus' "Lehrbuch der Zoologie", and the coiner of the terms "protostome" and "deuterostome".

Henry Nottidge Moseley (14 november 1844 - 10 november 1891) was a British naturalist. He went on the expedition of HMS "Challenger" 1872-1876. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1879. He studied at Harrow, Oxford (Arts) and the University of London (medicine). He married Miss Jeffreys in 1881, and his son was the British physicist Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley. He participated as naturalist in expeditions to Ceylon, and to California and Oregon, …

Louis François Auguste Souleyet was a French zoologist and naval surgeon. Souleyet was naturalist-surgeon on the voyage of "La Bonite", which circumnavigated the globe between February 1836 and November 1837 under Auguste Nicolas Vaillant (1793-1858). In the Pacific he studied marine molluscs. After the death of Joseph Fortuné Théodore Eydoux (1802-1841), Souleyet completed the zoological section of the voyage's official report.

Edmund Beecher Wilson was a pioneering American zoologist and geneticist. Wilson was born in Geneva, Illinois, and graduated from Yale in 1878. He earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins in 1881. He was a lecturer at Williams College in 1883-84 and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1884-85. He served as professor of biology at Bryn Mawr College from 1885 to 1891.

Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer (September 3, 1801 - April 2, 1869) was a German palaeontologist. He was born at Frankfurt am Main. In 1832 von Meyer issued a work entitled "Palaeologica", and in course of time he published a series of memoirs on various fossil organic remains: molluscs, crustaceans, fishes and higher vertebrata, including the Triassic predator "Teratosaurus", the earliest bird "Archaeopteryx lithographica" (1861), …

Martin R Pyke Jennie Rimington - R&D Administrator Martin R Pyke - Scientific Advisor (Molluscs) Martin joined the Royal Navy at the age of fifteen. He served in a variety of vessels from the very large to the smallest spending up to three months at sea at a time between ports from the UK to New Zealand as a seaman radar operator. He developed an interest in marine biology and subsequently completed a BSc in Fisheries Science at Hull College of Higher Education.

Doug McLeod Doug McLeod has a background in resource economics, an expertise which has been applied in both his original professional incarnation in the international oil industry and now in his second career in the aquaculture sector.

Dai Herbert is the Chief Curator of the Mollusca Section of the Natural Science Department. He obtained his Ph.D. from London University in 1984, the same year that he joined the staff of the Natal Museum. He has a serious thing about snails. He has published more than 50 papers in peer-reviewed journals, 3 book chapters, 1 book ( Field Guide to the Snails and Slugs of Eastern South Africa with Dick Kilburn) and over 50 popular articles.