George Shaw - Definition and Overview

George Kearsley Shaw.

George Kearsley Shaw (December 10, 1751 - July 22, 1813) was an English botanist and zoologist.

Shaw was a medical practitioner. He became the assistant lecturer in botany at Oxford University in 1786. In 1791 he became assistant keeper of the natural history department at the British Museum, becoming keeper in 1807. He was a co-founder of the Linnean Society in 1788, and became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1789.

Shaw published one of the first English descriptions with scientific names of several of the common Australian animals in his "Zoology of New Holland" (1794). He was among the first scientists to examine a platypus and published the first scientific description of it in The Naturalist's Miscellany in 1799.

His other publications included:

• Museum Leverianum, containing select specimens from the museum of the late Sir Ashton Lever (1792-6)
• General Zoology, or Systematic Natural History (16 vol.) (1809-1826) (volumes IX to XVI by James Francis Stephens)
• The Naturalist's Miscellany: Or, Coloured Figures Of Natural Objects; Drawn and Described Immediately From Nature (1789-1813) with Frederick Polydore Nodder (artist and engraver).