Gilbert Edward Archey

Gilbert Edward Archey (1890-1974) was a zoologist, ethnologist, WWI officer, and museum director from New Zealand. After serving in WWI he worked at the Canterbury Museum where he studied and published papers on numerous New Zealand fauna. He then became director of the Auckland Institute and Museum where he was personally responsible for getting funding from the Carnegie Institute. He wrote one of the major works on moas based on his own field work and collection. During his life he published numerous articles and described many new species of animals.

Archey was born at York, England, on 9 August 1890. Coming to New Zealand at an early age, he graduated from Canterbury University College, Christchurch, with the degrees of M.A. and D.Sc. From 1914 to 1923 he was Assistant Curator of the Canterbury Museum, then he was appointed to the Auckland Institute and Museum in 1924. In the First World War he served in the New Zealand Field Artillery, rising to a captaincy, and in the Second World War he was attached to the British Military Administration in Malaya with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He was on the New Zealand University Grants Committee, 1948–51, 1954–60, and on the Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand, being president from 1941 to 1942. He is a member of the Maori Purposes Fund Board, the Waitangi National Trust Board, and the Auckland branch of the Royal Society, and the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council. He retired from the Auckland Museum early in 1964. He was awarded an O.B.E. in 1919 and knighted in 1963. His publications, apart from contributions to learned journals, include South Sea Folk (1937 and 1949); Sculpture and Design, an Outline of Maori Art (1955); and The Moa, a Study of the Dinornithiformes (1941).