George Robert Waterhouse

George Robert Waterhouse (6 March 1810 – 21 January 1888) was an English naturalist. He was a keeper at the department of geology and later curator of the Zoological Society of London's museum.

Early life George was born in Somers Town to James Edward Waterhouse and Mary Newman. His father was a solicitor's clerk and an amateur entomologist. He was the brother of Frederick George Waterhouse, who also became a zoologist. George went to school at Koekelberg, near Brussels. He returned to England in 1824 and worked as an apprentice to an architect. Part of the work was in designing the garden of Charles Knight in the Vale of Health, Hampstead and the ornamentation for St. Dunstan's Church.

He was invited to join Charles Darwin on the voyage of the Beagle but he declined it. On Darwin's return, the collection of mammals and beetles was entrusted to him. In November 1843 he became an assistant in the mineralogical department of the British Museum of Natural History. He became keeper in 1851 upon the death of Charles Konig and held the position until his retirement in 1880. He died at Putney on 21 January 1888.

He had three sons (Charles Owen Waterhouse, Frederick Herschel Waterhouse, and Edward Alexander Waterhouse), all coleopterists, and three daughters.

Waterhouse was the author of A natural history of the Mammalia (1846–48). The work was begun in 1844 was done slowly as the original French publisher M. Hippolyte Baillière was unable to take it up. The two volumes covered the marsupials and the rodents. The famous Archaeopteryx specimen was acquired when he was curator. Amongst the numerous species he described are the numbat (Myrmecobius fasciatus), and the Syrian or golden hamster (Mesocricetus auratus). He also assisted Louis Agassiz with his Nomenclator Zoologicus (1842).

Publications