Gilbert Archey

Sir Gilbert Edward Archey (4 August 1890 – 20 October 1974) was a New Zealand zoologist, ethnologist, World War I officer, and museum director. He wrote one of the major works on the moa, based on his own field work and collection. He also published numerous articles and described many new animal species.

Early life and education Archey was born to Thomas Archey and Sarah Triffitt in York, England in 1890, and emigrated to New Zealand with his parents, at age two. He graduated from Canterbury University College, Christchurch, with the degree of M.A. with honours in zoology in 1913.

Career After a period teaching at Nelson College, Archey was Assistant Curator of the Canterbury Museum from 1914 to 1923, where he studied and published papers on numerous New Zealand fauna. He particularly worked on New Zealand moa, Dinornithiformes, extinct macrofauna birds. In 1924 he participated in the 1924 Chatham Islands Expedition. He was then appointed Director of the Auckland Institute and Museum in 1924, and was personally responsible for getting funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1935.

He was on the New Zealand University Grants Committee, 1948–51, 1954–60, and on the Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand, being president from 1941 to 1942. He was a member of the Maori Purposes Fund Board, the Waitangi National Trust Board, and the Auckland branch of the Royal Society, and the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council. and promoted to Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1958 Queen's Birthday Honours. In 1935, he was awarded the King George V Silver Jubilee Medal, and in 1953 he received the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 1963 Queen's Birthday Honours.