Person

McMichael, Donald Fred (1932 - 2017)

CBE

Born
January 1932
Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia
Died
10 June 2017
Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Occupation
Malacologist, Museum curator and Museum director

Summary

Don McMichael was a malacologist who worked at the Australian Museum for nearly 20 years, being Curator of Molluscs from 1957 to 1967. During this time he was responsible for vastly improving the housing and curation of the malacological collections. In his work on Australian freshwater mussels, published with I. D. Hiscock in 1958, McMichael was the first to describe anatomical and well as shell characters and distribution. With Tom Iredale he issued a checklist of New South Wales marine molluscs which included over 2,000 species. Other publications including popular books on shells. After leaving the Australian Museum McMichael headed a number of organisations related to environmental conservation for the New South Wales and Australian Governments. He was inaugural Director of the Australian Conservation Foundation, and of the National Museum of Australia.

Details

Chronology

1948
Career position - Trainee at Australian Museum
1952
Education - BSc, University of Sydney
1952 - 1957
Career position - Assistant Curator, Australian Museum
1953
Award - Fulbright Travelling Scholarship
1955
Education - PhD, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
1957 - 1967
Career position - Curator of Molluscs, Australian Museum
1961 - 1968
Career position - Editor, Journal of the Malacological Society of Australia
1965 - 1968
Career position - Secretary-Treasurer, Malacological Society of Australia
1967 - 1968
Career position - Inaugural Director, Australian Conservation Foundation
1969
Career position - President, Malacological Society of Australia
1969 - 1973
Career position - Director, New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service
1973 - 1975
Career position - President, River Murray Commission
1973 - 1975
Career position - Secretary, Commonwealth Department of the Environment and Conservation
1975 - 1978
Career position - Director of Environment, Commonwealth Department of Environment, Housing and Community Development
1976 - 1978
Career position - Chairman, Great Barrier Reef Advisory Committee
1978 - 1984
Career position - Secretary, Commonwealth Department of Home Affairs and Environment
1981
Award - Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE)
1981 - 1983
Career position - Chairman, Environment Committee, OECD
1981 - 1983
Career position - Director, Australian Minerals and Energy Environment Foundation
1984 - 1989
Career position - Director, National Museum of Australia, Canberra
1987 - 1989
Career position - Chairman of Council, Canberra College of Advanced Education
1989 - 1992
Career position - Chairman, Committee on Tax Incentives for the Arts
1991 - 1992
Career position - Chairman, Biological Diversity Advisory Committee, Department of Arts, Sport, the Environment, Tourism and Territories
1992 - 1997
Career position - Member, ACT Heritage Council
1993 - 1996
Career position - Deputy Chairman, ACT Land and Planning Appeals Board
1995 - 1996
Career position - Chairman, University Museums and Collections Review Committee
1995 - 2000
Career position - Director and Honorary Secretary, ICOM 98 Ltd
1997 -
Career position - Senior Member, Australian Capital Territory Administrative Appeals Tribunal
2001
Award - Centenary Medal for service as the first Director of the Australian Conservation Foundation

Published resources

Book Sections

Journal Articles

  • Iredale, T.; and McMichael, D. F., 'A reference list of the marine molluscs of New South Wales', Memoirs of the Australian Museum, 11 (1962), 1-109. Details
  • McMichael, D. F., 'Obituary - Charles Francis Laseron', Journal of the Malacological Society of Australia, 1 (3) (1959), 3. https://doi.org/10.1080/00852988.1959.10673760. Details
  • McMichael, D. F., 'Scientific Research at the Australian Museum', Australian Natural History, 14 (1963), 165-168. Details
  • McMichael, D. F.; and Hiscock, I. D., 'A monograph of the freshwater mussels (Mollusca: Pelecypoda) of the Australian region', Australian journal of marine and freshwater research, 9 (1958), 372-508. Details
  • McMichael, D. F.; and Whitley, G. P., 'A Bibliography of Charles Francis Laseron with an Index to his New Genera and Species', Proceedings of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, 1958/9 (1961), 114-130. Details
  • McMichael, Donald F.; and Whitley, Gilbert P., 'The Published Writings of Tom Iredale with an Index of his Scientific Names', The Australian Zoologist, 12 (1956), 211-250. Details
  • Monger, Alan, 'Farewell, Don McMichael', Newsletter (Malacological Society of Australasia), 163 (2017), 3. Details
  • Ponder, Winston; Loch, Ian; Talbot, Frank; and Kabat, Alan, 'Dr Donald F. McMichael CBE - his malacological contributions', Molluscan research, 38 (1) (2018), 1-4. http://doi.org.10.1080.13235818.2017.1373420. Details

Resources

Helen Cohn

EOAS ID: biogs/P006345b.htm

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

Published by the Centre for Transformative Innovation, Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2024 February (Kooyang - Gariwerd calendar)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#kooyang
For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P006345b.htm

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260