Bryan Nelson

Joseph Bryan Nelson MBE FRSE (14 March 1932 – 29 June 2015) was a British ornithologist, environmental activist and academic. He was a prominent authority on seabirds, publishing numerous books and articles on gannets, cormorants and other species, teaching zoology at the University of Aberdeen, and conducting pioneering ornithological research in Jordan, Christmas Island and the Galápagos Islands. Nelson was "acclaimed as the world's leading expert on the northern gannet". He also contributed to the creation of Christmas Island National Park, which helped to preserve the habitat of the endangered Abbott's booby. For most of his life, he was known by his middle name, Bryan. As a child during World War II, he developed a fascination with birds after he was given a book on ornithology.

In 1960, Nelson married his research colleague June Davison, who accompanied him to Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth to study gannets.

Personal life Nelson married June Davison in 1960; she survived him, as did their twin son and daughter.

Selected published works Azraq: Desert Oasis. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1974. Penguin Books, 1973,

The Gannet. City: Shire Publications, 1999,

The Atlantic Gannet. Great Yarmouth: Fenix Books Ltd, Norfolk, 2002, Pelicans, cormorants and their relatives: Pelecanidae, Sulidae, Phalacrocoracidae, Anhingidae, Fregatidae, Phaethontidae (also: Pelicans, Cormorants and their Allies). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005,