Tate, Ralph (1840 - 1901)

Summary

Ralph Tate was the first Elder Chair of Natural Science at the University of Adelaide (1875-1901) and published widely on geology, zoology and botany. His book titled the Handbook of the Flora of Extratropical South Australia was the first of its kind and a crucial resource for future botanical studies in South Australia. Tate was a member of many national and international scientific bodies and his reputation helped persuade the South Australian Government to appoint a Government Geologist. He described numerous species, and is commemorated in species in several genera.

Details

Chronology

1864 - c. 1867

Career position - Assistant Curator at the museum of the Geological Society of London

1867 - 1868

Career position - Mining Prospector in central America and Venezuela

1875 -

Career position - Inaugural Elder Chair of Natural Science at the University of Adelaide

1877 - 1879

Career position - Editor, Transactions and proceedings and report of the Adelaide Philosophical Society

1878 - 1880

Career position - President, Adelaide Philosophical Society

1880

Career position - Instrumental in the Adelaide Philosophical Society becoming the Royal Society of South Australia

1883

Career position - Chariman, Field Naturalists' Section, Royal Society of South Australia

1888

Career position - President, Section D (Biology), Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science

1889 - 1901

Career position - Editor, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia (sometimes jointly with Walter Howchin)

1891 - 1894

Career Position - President, Royal Society of South Australia

1892 - 1893

Career position - President, Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science

1893

Award - Clarke Medal received from the Royal Society of New South Wales

May 1894 - August 1894

Career position - Geologist and botanist, Horn Scientific Exploring Expedition

1934

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus intertexta var. diminuta Blakely, of which Tate had collected the syntype

1936

Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus oxymitra Blakely, of which Tate had collected the syntype in 1894, recorded as E. oldfieldii F.v.M.

Related entries

Archival resources

Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science

• Australian Botanists - Biographies, MS 064; Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science. Details
• Ralph Tate - Records, 1863 - 1965, MS 049; Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science. Details

Barr Smith Library, Special Collections, The University of Adelaide

• Ferdinand Jakob Heinrich von Mueller - Records, 1880 - 1890, O9 M9; Barr Smith Library, Special Collections, The University of Adelaide. Details
• Ralph Tate - Records, 1889 - 1894, MSS 0016; Barr Smith Library, Special Collections, The University of Adelaide. Details

Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales

• Ralph Tate - Records, 1856 - 1941, ML MSS 161; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details

National Herbarium, Melbourne

• Ralph Tate - Records, 1884 - 1892, MSS M20; National Herbarium, Melbourne. Details

Published resources

Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation Exhibitions

• McCarthy, Gavan; Smith, Ailie; Moje, Christine; Rigby, Rebecca, The Study of Australian Eucalypts, eScholarship Research Centre, 2013, http://www.eoas.info/eucalypts/index.html. Details
• Smith, Ailie, Adolph Basser Library Manuscript Collection, eScholarship Research Centre, 2012, http://www.eoas.info/basser_browse.html. Details

Books

• Musgrave, A., Bibliography of Australian entomology, 1775-1930: with biographical notes on authors and collectors (Sydney: Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, 1932), 380 pp. Details
• Tate, Ralph, Handbook of the Flora of Extratropical South Australia (Adelaide: Education Department, 1890), 303 pp. Details
• Tietkens, W. H., Journal of the Central Australian Exploring Expedition, 1889, under command of W.H. Tietkens, despatched by the Central Australian Exploring and Prospecting Association, Limited, under the auspices of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, South Australian Branch (Adelaide: Government Printer, 1891), 84 pp. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/60481. Details

Book Sections

• Alderman, A. R., 'Tate, Ralph (1840-1901), geologist and botanist' in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Bede Nairn, ed., vol. 6 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1976), pp. 243-244. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A060259b.htm. Details
• Murray, Peter F., 'Tate's palaeontological observations with reference to the geological work of the Horn Expedition' in Exploring Central Australia: society, the environment and the 1894 Horn Expedition, Morton, S. R. and Mulvaney, D. J., eds (Chipping Norton, N.S.W.: Surrey Beatty & Sons, 1996), pp. 150-67. Details

Conference Proceedings

• Report of the fifth meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science edited by Tate, Ralph; Rennie, E. H.; Bragg, W. H. (Adelaide: Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 1894), i-xxxi, 1-691 pp, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/52737. Details

Edited Books

• Spencer, Baldwin ed., Report on the work of the Horn Expedition to Central Australia, 4 vols (London: Melbourne: Dulau and Co.: Melville, Mullen and Slade, 1896). Details

Journal Articles

• Alderman, A. R., 'The Development of Geology in South Australia: a personal view', Records of the Australian Academy of Science, 1 (2) (1967), 30-52. http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/HR9670120030.htm. Details
• Kidman, Barbara P., 'Ralph Tate (1840-1901), Naturalist par excellence: Life and Work before Emigration to Australia', Historical Records of Australian Science, 24 (2) (2013), 207-24, https://doi.org/10.1071/HR13003. Details
• Kidman, Barbara P., 'Ralph Tate, his Natural History Museum at the University of Adelaide and the "Tate Museum"', Historical Records of Australian Science, 26 (2) (2015), 101-21, https://doi.org/10.1071/HR15003. Details
• Mueller, F. von and Tate, R., 'List of plants collected during Mr Tietkens' expedition into Central Australia, 1889', Transactions and proceedings of the Royal Society of South Australia, 13 (1890), 94-109. Details
• Tate, R., 'Anniversary address by the President: some work of the Society since 1876', Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 19 (1895), 266-9. Details
• Tate, Ralph, 'Anniversary address', Transactions and Proceedings and Report of the Philosophical Society of Adelaide, South Australia, 1 (1878), 11-47. Details
• Tate, Ralph, 'Anniversary address of the President', Transactions and proceedings and report of the Royal Society of South Australia, 3 (1880), xxxix-xliv. Details
• Tate, Ralph, 'A census of the Older Tertiary fauna of Australia. [Topic only]', Report of the first meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 1 (1889), 231, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/15813321. Details
• Tate, Ralph, 'On some new or little-known genera of Australian Mollusca', Report of the first meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 1 (1889), 335-336, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/15813425. Details
• Tate, Ralph, 'Glacial phenomena in South Australia', Report of the first meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 1 (1889), 231-232, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/15813321. Details
• Tate, Ralph, 'New Australian species of notable genera of Mollusca. [Topic only]', Report of the first meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 1 (1889), 334, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/15813424. Details
• Tate, Ralph, 'On the age of the Mesozoic rocks of the Lake Eyre Basin', Report of the first meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 1 (1889), 228-230, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/15813318. Details
• Tate, Ralph, 'Address by [...] President of Section D - Biology [On the influence of physiographical changes in the distribution of life in Australia]', Report of the first meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 1 (1889), 312-325, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/15813402. Details
• Tate, Ralph, 'Census of the Australian Mollusca. [Topic only]', Report of the first meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 1 (1889), 334, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/15813424. Details
• Tate, Ralph, 'A Century of Geological Progress. Presidential Address', Report of the fifth meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 5 (1894), 1-69, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/15362160. Details

Resources

• Wikidata, http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7288153. Details
• VIAF - Virtual International Authority File, OCLC, https://viaf.org/viaf/15134454. Details
• 'Tate, Ralph (1840-1901)', Trove, National Library of Australia, 2009, https://nla.gov.au/nla.party-467475. Details

Resource Sections

• 'Tate, Ralph - Ms 49', in Listing of Adolph Basser Library holdings, Australian Academy of Science, 1994, http://www.science.org.au/basser/manuscript-collection/ms049.html. Details

See also

• 'See the list of genera species in named by this author, using author abbreviation 'Tate'', Australian Plant Name Index (APNI), Australian National Botanic Gardens, 2012, http://www.anbg.gov.au/cgi-bin/apni. Details
• Cooper, Barry J.; and Jago, James B., 'Early Understanding of the Cambrian in South Australia: 1839-1910', in The History of Geology in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century; the Story in Australia, and in Victoria, from Selwyn and McCoy to Gregory - 1853 to 1903 edited by Pierson, R. R. (Melbourne: Earth Sciences History Group, GSA Inc., 2007), pp. 20-5.. Details
• Hall, Norman, Botanists of the Eucalypts: short biographies of people who have named eucalypts, whose names have been given to species or who have collected type material (Melbourne: CSIRO, 1978), 101 pp. Details
• Maiden, J. H., 'A century of botanical endeavour in South Australia', Report of the eleventh meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 11 (1908), 158-199, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/14539732. Details
• Serle, Percival, Dictionary of Australian biography (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1949). Details
• Tate, Ralph (England-Australia 1840-1901), Some Biogeographers, Evolutionists and Ecologists: Chrono-Biographical Sketches, http://www.wku.edu/%7Esmithch/chronob/TATE1840.htm. Details
• Vallance, T. G., 'Pioneers and leaders - a record of Australian palaeontology in the nineteenth century', Alcheringa, 2 (1978), 243-50. Details