Richard Dell
| Richard Dell | |
|---|---|
| Born | 11 July 1920 Auckland, New Zealand |
| Died |
6 March 2002 (aged 81) Wellington, New Zealand |
| Nationality | New Zealand |
| Fields | Malacology |
| Institutions | Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa |
| Alma mater | Victoria University of Wellington |
| Known for | Work on Mollusca of the Chatham Islands and the Antarctic |
| Spouse | Miriam Matthews (1946-2002; his death) |
Richard Kenneth Dell QSO (11 July 1920 – 6 March 2002) was a New Zealand malacologist.
Dell was born in Auckland in 1920. As a young boy, he took an interest in shells, collecting them from the shores of Waitemata Harbour. He even managed to start a "museum" in his backyard. He also helped curate the Auckland War Memorial Museum shell collection.
Dell studied at Mount Albert Grammar School and later at the Auckland University College. He took a teacher’s course at Auckland Teachers' College, but World War II delayed his plans to become a teacher. He joined the New Zealand Artillery, serving on Nissan Island, the Solomon Islands, in the Middle East, Egypt, and Italy. He later published several papers on the land snails he had collected in the Solomon Islands.
After the war, Dell was offered a job as malacologist at the Dominion Museum, where he started to standardise the cabinets and built up a collection of more than 30,000 specimens. In the meantime, he took a master's degree in Science at Victoria University of Wellington, with a pioneering thesis on cephalopods, octopuses and squid.
His breakthrough came with the Chatham Islands Expedition of 1954. The results were published in 1956 as The Archibenthal Mollusca of New Zealand, which was a major contribution to the knowledge of molluscan fauna in the bathyal zone of New Zealand waters. This publication earned him a Doctorate in Science in 1956.
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