Arthur Loveridge

Arthur Loveridge (28 May 1891 – 16 February 1980) was a British biologist and herpetologist who wrote about animals in East Africa, particularly Tanzania, and New Guinea. He gave scientific names to several gecko species in the region.

Arthur Loveridge was born in Penarth, and was interested in natural history from childhood. He gained experience with the National Museum of Wales and Manchester Museum before becoming the curator of the Nairobi Museum (now the National Museum of Kenya) in 1914. During WW1, he joined the East African Mounted Rifles, later returning to the museum to build up the collections. He then became an assistant game warden in Tanganyika.

In 1924, he joined the Museum of Comparative Zoology in the grounds of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was the curator of herpetology. He returned to East Africa on several field trips and wrote many scientific papers before retiring from Harvard in 1957.

He married Mary Victoria Sloan in 1921, who died in 1972. They had one son.

On retirement, they moved to Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, from where he continued his interest in natural history, publishing several articles on the island's wildlife in the St Helena Wirebird and St Helena News Review in the 1960s & 1970s. He died in 1980 and was buried in St Helena next to his wife.