Ronald Vernon Southcott

Ronald Vernon Southcott (15 May 1918 – 9 April 1998) was an Australian medical zoologist specializing in Acari, mites and ticks.

Biography Southcott was born in Adelaide, a son of Horace Lloyd Southcott (1891–1949), managing director of Southcott Limited, engineers. After finishing school at St Peter's College, Adelaide Southcott started working on mites, or the acari, at the age of 16 with Herbert Womersley the acarologist at the South Australian Museum. Womersley described and named the trombidiid mite, which Southcott had collected on a cycling trip in the hills near Adelaide in 1934, Microtrombidium southcotti, after Southcott. He also contributed on the medical effects of high liver consumption of Arctic explorers, leading to hypervitaminosis A.

In 1972 Southcott self-published a book 'Studies on incidences and correlations of diseases and immunizations in South Australian schoolchildren 1952–1962.' The data used was from the results of the medical examination of schoolchildren in South Australia, and from the routine questionnaires completed by the parents for public health purposes. The data was codified and then fed into the computer at the division of Mathematical Statistics, CSIRO, in Adelaide. The data were analysed by age and sex of the children, by area of state classifications, and by region of birth. They were analysed using the chi-squared distribution.

Other books he wrote were:

Studies on the epidemiology of the 1947/1948 epidemic of poliomyelitis in South Australia / by R. V. Southcott and N. D. Crosby; with the collaboration of N. S. Stenhouse Southcott, R. V [Book : 1949] At University of Sydney

Studies of the mortality and morbidity of a series of South Australian based veterans : and the interrelationships between mortality, preceding morbidity, and other factors / by R.V. Southcott, L.G. Veitch Southcott, R. V [Book : 1980]

Family Southcott married Heather Joyce Miller in April 1952.