Keppel Harcourt Barnard

Who was Keppel Harcourt Barnard?

Keppel Harcourt Barnard was a South African zoologist and museum director. He was the only son of Harcourt George Barnard M.A., a solicitor from Lambeth, and Anne Elizabeth Porter of Royston.

Barnard was born in London. His first education was at a private school in Camberley from where he went to the Realgymnasium in Mannheim to improve his German. From 1905 to 1908 this unusually gifted and versatile scholar attended Christ's College, Cambridge, taking the Natural Sciences Tripos in Botany, Geology and Zoology. He also took the newly introduced courses in Anthropology, Ethnology and Geography. For the following three years he studied law at the Middle Temple, becoming a barrister in 1911. After a short spell as naturalist with the Marine Biological Laboratory in Plymouth, he joined the staff of the South African Museum in Cape Town in 1911 as a marine biology assistant. He became assistant director in 1921 and director from 1946 until his 1956 retirement when he was free to work on the molluscs.

His D.Sc. was from the University of Cape Town with a dissertation on the "Distribution of Crustacea in South African Waters", and he eventually became a world authority on crustaceans. His other favoured field was the taxonomy and classification of South African fishes, a discipline in which he did important pioneering work. Stellenbosch University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1956.