Robert Gurney

Robert Gurney (31 July 1879 – 5 March 1950) was a British zoologist from the Gurney family, most famous for his monographs on British Freshwater Copepoda (1931–1933) and the Larvae of Decapod Crustacea. He was not affiliated with any institution, but worked at home, initially in Norfolk, and later near Oxford. He travelled to North Africa and Bermuda, and received material from other foreign expeditions, including the Terra Nova Expedition (1910–1913) and the Discovery Investigations of the 1920s and 1930s.

Biography Robert Gurney was born in 1879 as the fourth son of John Gurney (1845–1887) and Isabel Charlotte Gurney (later Baroness Talbot de Malahide) of Sprowston Hall, Norfolk. He went to school at Eton College, and went on to study at New College, Oxford, graduating with first class honours in 1902. He was awarded a D.Sc. by the University of Oxford in 1927. Later, Garstang's daughter married Alister Hardy, strengthening Gurney's connections with zoology.

Scientific work Gurney's first scientific work was a paper on metamorphosis in the crab Corystes cassivelaunus, which he published in 1902 while still an undergraduate at the University of Oxford.

Gurney's two great study objects were the Copepoda and the larvae of Decapoda, and his greatest works were the three-volume monograph British Freshwater Copepoda, published by the Ray Society in 1931–1933, and his Larvae of Decapod Crustacea published by the Ray Society in 1942. Robertgurneya Lang, 1948 (Copepoda: Diosaccidae) Tisbe gurneyi (Lang, 1934) (Copepoda: Tisbidae) Leptocaris gurneyi (Nicholls, 1944) (Copepoda: Darcythompsoniidae) Harpacticus gurneyi Jakubisiak, 1933 (Copepoda Harpactidae) Kelleria gurneyi Sewell, 1949 (Copepoda: Kelleriidae) Diarthrodes gurneyi Lang, 1948 (Copepoda: Thalestridae) Nikoides gurneyi Hayashi, 1975 (Decapoda: Processidae) Saccoglossus guerneyi (Robinson, 1927) (Hemichordata: Enteropneusta)