Person

Saville-Kent, William, 1845-1908

1845-1908

William Saville-Kent was born on July 10, 1845, in Sidmouth, Devon, England.

He was an English marine biologist and author. He was educated at King's College London and the Royal School of Mines under T.H. Huxley. From 1866 to 1872, he held various jobs working at the Cambridge Museum, Hunterian Museum, and the British Museum. He became a Fellow of the Royal Zoological Society of London (1869) and the Linnean Society of London (1873). In 1870, Saville-Kent received a grant from the Royal Society to conduct a dredging survey off Portugal. He worked as Curator and Naturalist at the Brighton Aquarium (1872–1873), the Manchester Aquarium (1873–1876), and various other aquariums (the Great Yarmouth Aquarium and the Royal Aquarium), where he was a pioneer of the concept of sustainable fisheries. He returned to Brighton in 1879, and on the recommendation of T.H. Huxley to the Tasmanian government to restore badly depleted oyster beds, he became Inspector of Fisheries in Tasmania in 1884. He was appointed Commissioner of Fisheries for Queensland (1889-1892) and Commissioner of Fisheries for Western Australia (1893-1895). Saville-Kent went on to chair the Royal Society of Queensland in 1889–1890. He began to culture pearls in tropical Australia and was probably the first to succeed in producing both blister and spherical pearls of commercial quality. The author of many scientific papers and reports, he wrote three major books: A Manual of the Infusoria (3 vols., 1880-82), The Great Barrier Reef (1893), and The Naturalist in Australia (1897).

In 1872, he married Elizabeth Susanna Bennett (1849–1875), and in 1876, he married Mary Ann Livesey (1845–1919). He died on October 11, 1908, in Bournemouth, Dorset, England.