Name Gerard van | Died 1995 | |
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Education University of British Columbia Books Birds and Their Food at Mackay Airport, Queensland | ||
Jonkheer Gerard Frederick van Tets (19 January 1929 – 14 January 1995), otherwise known as Jerry van Tets, was a twentieth century British, Canadian and Australian ornithologist and palaeontologist. Born to Dutch parents, Jhr Hendrik Barthout van Tets, Heer van Goidschalxoord and Jkvw Thérèse van Heukelom, in London on 19 January 1929, Van Tets spent his childhood in the Netherlands. Following World War II, he moved to England to complete his schooling at Hazelmere. He completed two years of national service with the Royal Engineers in England and Austria before emigrating to Canada where he studied at the University of Toronto (1952–54) and the University of British Columbia (1954-1963), obtaining his PhD in 1963. He became a member of the American Ornithologists' Union in 1958. In November 1963, he married Patricia Anne Johnston in Vancouver, British Columbia, moving shortly thereafter to Australia, where he joined the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in the Division of Wildlife and Ecology, now the Division of Sustainable Ecosystems.
Van Tets swam for the swimming teams of British Troops Austria, the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia.
Van Tets received recognition for his studies on bird strike damage to aircraft, and later for his studies of the bird bones in the Australian National Wildlife Collection, including those of the extinct Tasman booby which he described scientifically in 1988, and became a specialist authority on the mutton bird and the cormorant family. Together with Michael Crowley, Chris Davey, Peter Fullagar, Ederic Slater, Petrus Heyligers and others, Van Tets helped to establish and maintain a long term ecological study on Montague Island, NSW. Van Tets served as compiler for the first four bird (Aves) volumes of the Zoological Catalogue of Australia and as a sub-editor for behaviour for the first three volumes of the Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds.
On retirement in 1988, Van Tets continued to work as a research fellow and as curator of osteology for the Australian National Wildlife Collection and the Faunal Reference Collection of the Prehistory Department of the Australian National University. He died in Canberra, Australia on 14 January 1995. Van Tets was survived by his wife and three children, Janet Bradly, Ian van Tets and Kit Cassidy.
The extinct New Zealand stiff-tailed duck, Oxyura vantetsi, was named in his honour.
The Gerard Frederick van Tets Field Research Station on Montague Island, NSW was named in recognition of Jerry's work there.