Antwerp Edgar Pratt

Antwerp Edgar Pratt FRGS (6 March 1852 - 4 January 1924) was a Victorian naturalist, explorer, author, and renowned collector of plants, insects, and other animals. Species named for Pratt include three mammals and two reptiles. Two of his sons and a nephew were also collectors.

Biography Pratt was born on 6 March 1852 on the Isle of Wight in England to Charles, a grocer, and Ann Pratt. He had two elder siblings, Florence and Vienna.

He married Alice Mary Spanner in 1882 and they had six children, four sons and two daughters. Felix Pratt and Charles Pratt followed their father and became successful insect collectors. His other sons Henry and Joseph also made important contributions to science.

He was a member of the Royal Geographical Society and in 1891 he received the Gill Memorial Award for the encouragement of geographical research in early career researchers who have shown great potential. In the same year he visited Tibet and China. Whilst he was in Tatsienlu in China he met and was assisted by the French missionaries and naturalists Bishop Felix Biet and Father Jean André Soulié.

He died in 1924 in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, aged 71.

Expeditions

A.E. Pratt, 1906. Introduction to Two Years among New Guinea Cannibals.

Benefactors Antwerp Edgar Pratt and his sons travelled and collected specimens on behalf of a number of prominent people including the English entomologists John Henry Leech, Sir George Hamilton Kenrick and James John Joicey as well as Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild.

Collections Birmingham Museums Trust holds substantial natural history collections gathered by A. E. Pratt and his sons.

Species named after Pratt Pratt's roundleaf bat Hipposiderous pratti, 1891 Pratt's vole (Alt. the Sichuan Red-backed Vole) Eothenomys chinensis, 1891 Pratt's rocket frog Colostethus pratti, 1899 Sphenomorphus pratti, 1903 Pratt's tree frog Litoria pratti, 1911 Pratt, A.E. (1906). Two Years among New Guinea Cannibals, a Naturalists Sojourn among the Aborigines of Unexplored New Guinea. London: Seeley & Co.