G. M. Mathews

Gregory Macalister Mathews CBE FRSE FZS FLS (10 September 1876 – 27 March 1949) was an Australian-born amateur ornithologist who spent most of his later life in England.

He was born in Biamble in New South Wales the son of Robert H. Mathews. He was educated at The King's School, Parramatta.

Mathews made his fortune in mining shares, and moved to England in 1902. In 1910 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were William Eagle Clarke, Ramsay Heatley Traquair, John Alexander Harvie-Brown and William Evans.

Mathews was a controversial figure in Australian ornithology. He was responsible for bringing trinomial nomenclature into local taxonomy, however he was regarded as an extreme splitter. He recognised large numbers of subspecies on scant evidence and few notes. In particular, this drew a hostile response from Archibald James Campbell, a leading Australian figure in birds at the time. He later began splitting genera. Dominic Serventy foretold that although a great many of these subspecies ceased to be recognised, future research would have to resort to the use of some of them if and when evidence supported their distinct status.

He was Chairman of the British Ornithologists' Club from 1935 to 1938. He was made CBE in 1939 for his services to ornithology.

Mathews described M. s. musgravei, currently recognized as a subspecies of the splendid fairy-wren, in 1922 as a new species of bird.

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