Thomas Jeffery Parker

Thomas Jeffery Parker F.R.S. (17 October 1850 – 7 November 1897) was a zoologist who worked in New Zealand.

Parker was born in London on 17 October 1850; his father was the anatomist William Kitchen Parker. He studied at Clarendon House School and graduated from the University of London in 1868.

At the age of 22, he worked with Thomas Henry Huxley in Huxley's zoological demonstrations. Huxley's work on crayfish kindled in Parker an interest in crustaceans, and he went on to study the marine "crayfish" (spiny lobsters) of New Zealand, together with his student Josephine Gordon Rich, who later married William Aitcheson Haswell.

On 23 December 1874, Thomas Jeffery Parker married Charlotte Elizabeth Rossell in Bramley, Yorkshire. In 1880, they emigrated to New Zealand, becoming professor of zoology at the University of Otago in Dunedin, succeeding Frederick Wollaston Hutton. He was also curator of the Otago Museum. Parker was made a Fellow of the Royal Society on 7 June 1888.

In his later years, Parker suffered from diabetes, and he died on 7 November 1897 at Warrington. After his death, Parker was succeeded at the University of Otago by William Blaxland Benham.

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