All
lodges are made up of men of quality who add value to society in many
ways. Occasionally though we have men who also receive a degree of
public acknowledgment for their activities. One such Yeronga member was
our second RW Master (1916) Thomas Harvey Johnston. He was a member for 9
years before relocating to SA with work. Here is a bio:
Thomas
Harvey Johnston (1881-1951), biologist and parasitologist, was born on 9
December 1881 at Balmain, Sydney, son of Thomas Johnston, Irish-born
foreman mason, and his Australian-born wife Mary, née McLeod. After
schooling Johnston joined the education department, won the Jones
memorial medal and went to the University of Sydney (B.A., 1906; B.Sc.,
M.A., 1907; D.Sc., 1911). On 1 January 1907 at Petersham he married
Alice Maude Pearce.
Johnston taught at Fort Street Public
School in 1903-06, lectured in zoology and physiology at Sydney
Technical College in 1907-08 and became assistant director of the
Bathurst Technical College in 1908. He was appointed assistant
microbiologist at the newly established Bureau of Microbiology of the
New South Wales Health Department in 1909. Lecturer in charge of the
department of biology in the new University of Queensland from 1911, he
was appointed professor in 1919.
Johnston was chairman of a
committee formed in 1912 to investigate control measures for the
introduced pest, prickly pear, and worked overseas in 1912-14 with Henry
Tryon. The two men, known as 'the prickly pair', succeeded in
introducing Dactylopius ceylonicus, the cochineal insect which
controlled one species of the pear Opuntia monacantha. In 1920 Johnston
was appointed controller of the Commonwealth prickly pear laboratories
and went overseas again in 1920-22. He had twice collected and
introduced unsuccessfully the insect Cactoblastis cactorum in 1914, when
it did feed on the pear but died out in 1921. The eventual devastation
of the prickly pear by it followed a later introduction in 1924.
Johnston was keenly interested in the marine ecology of Caloundra and
the southern Barrier Reef islands. He was president of the Royal Society
of Queensland (1915-16) and of the Queensland Field Naturalists' Club
(1916-17). He was a foundation member of the Great Barrier Reef
Committee and a member of the Australian National Research Council until
his death.
Johnston was appointed professor of zoology at the
University of Adelaide in 1922, creating a new department, and acted
also as professor of botany in 1928-34. Specializing in descriptive
parasitology, he was also a world authority on helminthology; he added
much new material to the extensive collection of the South Australian
Museum. At the invitation of Sir Douglas Mawson he served as chief
zoologist with the British, Australian and New Zealand Antarctic
Research Expedition of 1929, went on two cruises of the Discovery in
1929-31 and was editor of the zoological and botanical reports. In
1929-37 he participated with (Sir) John Cleland in many expeditions to
Central Australia.
Active in many scientific and cultural
institutions and societies, Johnston won numerous honours including the
David Syme prize in 1913, the first Walter and Eliza Hall fellowship in
economic biology in the University of Queensland, the Sir Joseph Verco
medal and, in 1939, the Mueller medal of the Australian and New Zealand
Association for the Advancement of Science. He wrote or co-authored 299
papers.
Affectionately known as 'T.H.J.', Johnston was gentle,
kindly, hard working, clear thinking and sensitive, with a slow, quiet
sense of humour. He lived up to a high ethical code and was in the sense
of the Greek philosophers 'a complete man'. He died in Adelaide of
coronary thrombosis on 30 August 1951, survived by his wife and
daughter; his son predeceased him. He was cremated.
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