Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria |
Born on 24 June 1922 in Melbourne; died on 2 January 1994 in Tomkin, NSW.
Murray Wallace was born in Melbourne, the third son of Sir Robert and
Lady Wallace. He graduated from the Department
of Zoology of the University of Sydney in 1944,
with first class honours in entomology, on the basis
of a thesis on mosquitoes.
Immediately after
graduation he joined the Royal Australian Air Force
as a Flying Officer, and served with a malaria
control unit in Papua New Guinea.
In April 1946 Murray was appointed to the CSIR
Division of Economic Entomology as an Assistant
Research Officer, with a salary of £450 per annum.
He was posted to Katanning, WA, with the task of
testing the effectiveness of the new insecticides
DDT and BHC in controlling the redlegged earth
mite Halotydeus destructor.
His work led to the
widespread adoption of these chemicals by
graziers, but Murray: did not advocate their
indiscriminate use. Instead he set out to determine
whether their use was economically worthwhile,
and developed a strategy for planning pesticide
applications on the basis of market forces. He
showed that under some circumstances graziers
would be better off spending their money on
fertiliser rather than pesticides. This example is
typical of Murray's lifelong determination to ensure
that the results of scientific research were used to
the benefit of the growers and taxpayers who
support it.
In later life he continued to work on new industral insecticides, but also on
biological control methods by the introduction of predator species.
In 1983 he was awarded a DSc by the University of Sydney based on a thesis titled: 'The Ecology and Control of some Insects and Mites Associated with Pastures and Forests'.
In retirement Murray and his wife June moved to the South Coast of NSW and became involved with the development of the Eurobodalla Naive Botanic Gardens, also attending theInternational conference on botanic gardens in Rio de Janeiro.
He died from a malignant lymphoma at his South Coast home on 2 January 1994.
Source: Extracted from:
https://vwma.org.au/explore/people/1087193
WALLACE, Murray Macadam Hay
The Ryerson Index Online Database;
R.B. Halliday, OBITUARY:
Murray McAdam Hay Wallace
1922 - 1994
News Bulletin of the Australian Entomological Society Inc.
Volume 30, Part 2, May 1994
R. B. Halliday, '250 YEARS OF AUSTRALIAN ACAROLOGY' in
Acarology: Proceedings of the 10th International Congress, CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne, 2001
Portrait Photo: John Green, CSIRO, Obituary (above)
Data from 471 specimens