Papers of Donovan Reginald Rosevear (1900-1986)

Much of the material had been arranged and annotated by Rosevear during his retirement, and this arrangement has been preserved.

<p>Details of the locations of other collections of Rosevear's papers, photographs and specimens are given in item 1.</p>

The collection was presented to the Museum by Mrs Gerda-Maria Rosevear through R W J Keay, in December 1990.

Donovan Reginald Rosevear was born in Chelsea on 28 November 1900, and was educated at Bedford School and Christ's College, Cambridge, where he obtained a B.A. and a Diploma in Forestry (items 10, 11). He joined the Colonial Forest Service in 1924, as an Assistant Conservator of Forests. He was promoted to Conservator in 1944, Assistant Chief Conservator in 1946, to Chief Conservator in 1950, and finally to Inspector General of Forests in 1951. After his retirement in 1954, Rosevear worked as an Honorary Associate at the Natural History Museum, preparing a series of monographs on the mammals of West Africa; Bats was published in 1965, Rodents in 1969, and Carnivores in 1974. He had wide-ranging interests in natural history, local history and ethnography, and was the author of 101 publications between 1931 and 1985 (see the bibliography in item 1).