Malacological Society of London

The Malacological Society of London is a British learned society and charitable organisation concerned with malacology, the study of molluscs, a large phylum of invertebrate animals divided into nine or ten taxonomic classes, of which two are extinct.

Founded in 1893, the Society was one of the earliest such national bodies anywhere in the world concerned only with molluscs, although the Conchological Society of Great Britain and Ireland is older.

The Society was founded in 1893 "to advance education, research and learning for the public benefit in the study of Mollusca from both pure and applied aspects". The Society's first president was Henry Woodward.

On 15 September 1901 the Society lost its Secretary, Martin Fountain Woodward, who was drowned when a boat he was travelling in capsized off the coast of County Galway while he was in temporary charge of the marine biological laboratory of the Fisheries Board for Ireland at Innisbofin.

Founding members included the zoologist and malacologist E. A. Smith, president of the Society from 1901 to 1903, and J. R. le B. Tomlin, who named more than a hundred taxa of gastropod molluscs. Another notable early member was the geologist Caroline Birley, who joined the Society in 1894.Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen (1834–1923), author of The Land and Freshwater Mollusca of India (1882–1887) and George Bond Howes (1853-1905) were early Presidents of the Society, and M. W. K. Connolly, who published some fifty papers on molluscs, was a member of the Society from 1908 to 1938 and was president of the Conchological Society in 1930. The Australian naturalist Charles Hedley was a vice-president of the Society from 1923 until his death in 1926.Ronald Winckworth, a member since 1919, served as the Society's editor and went on to be its President from 1939 to 1942.

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