Frederick ChapmanPrint Page

The gates commmemorate Frederick Chapman (1864 - 1943) who was a member of the Maranoa Committee from 1926 to 1943.

Frederick Chapman was born at Camden Town, London.  His father was an assistant to Michael Faraday and John Tyndall.  Chapman went to school in Chelsea and also studied privately, and in 1881 he became assistant to Professor J. W. Judd in the geology department, Royal College of Science, London.

In 1902, on Judd's recommendation, Chapman was appointed by the Victorian government to the newly created position of palaeontologist to the National Museum, Melbourne. His first duty was to transfer to the museum large collections of fossils housed at the Geological Survey of Victoria and at the University of Melbourne. Interested in Australian flora, he was honorary curator of the Maranoa wildflower gardens near his home at Balwyn.

Chapman was honoured by many learned societies. In 1896 he was elected associate of the Linnean Society of London and was a fellow of the Geological Society, London, which in 1899 awarded him the Lyell Prize for research and in 1930 the Lyell Medal. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society, London, in 1892 and an honorary fellow in 1929. In 1920 he received the David Syme prize and medal for research. From 1920 he was a member of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. In 1919  - 20 he was president of the Microscopical Society and Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria and was a member of the Australian National Research Council from 1922. In 1926 and 1932 the royal societies of South Australia and New Zealand made him an honorary fellow. He was president of the Royal Society of Victoria in 1929 - 30, and in 1932 received the (W.B.) Clarke Medal from the Royal Society of South Wales. In 1933 he became corresponding member of the Paleontological Society (United States of America) and in 1941 the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria awarded him the Australian Natural History Medallion.

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