Ralph Tate, his Natural History Museum at the University of Adelaide and the ‘Tate Museum'

Abstract

Many of Ralph Tate's achievements as the University of Adelaide's foundation Professor of Natural Science arewell known.The focus here is on the quite remarkable, but almost forgotten, natural history museum that he built at the University and that after his death was named the Tate Museum. The paper outlines and explains the difficulties that Tate encountered in establishing the museum, the strictly geological focus of his successors and the gradual dispersal of Tate's main collections.