Albert Heber Longman (24 June 1880 – 16 February 1954), also often referred to as Heber Longman or Heber Albert Longman, was an Australian newspaper publisher and museum director of British origin.

Early years

Longman was born at

Heytesbury Heytesbury is a village (formerly considered to be a town) and a civil parish in Wiltshire, England. The village lies on the north bank of the Wylye, about southeast of the town of Warminster. The civil parish includes most of the small nei ...

in Wiltshire, England, and educated at Emwell House School at

Warminster Warminster () is a historic market town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in south-west Wiltshire, England, on the western edge of Salisbury Plain. The parish had a population of 18,173 in 2021. The name ''Warminster'' occurs first i ...

. Because of a chest weakness, in 1902 he emigrated to Australia and settled in

Toowoomba Toowoomba ( ), nicknamed 'The Garden City' and 'T-Bar', is a city on the border of South East Queensland and Darling Downs regions of Queensland, Australia. It is located west of Queensland's capital, Brisbane. The urban population of Toowoom ...

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

. There he, with support from local businesses, established a newspaper first called the ''Rag'', and later the ''Citizen''. In 1904 he married Irene Maud Bayley, who was to be the first woman elected to the

Queensland Parliament The Parliament of Queensland is the unicameral legislative body of the Australian state of Queensland. As provided under the Constitution of Queensland, the Parliament consists of the King, represented by the Governor of Queensland, and the ...

. Interested in the natural history of the area, Longman collected botanical specimens and helped establish the local field naturalists club. In 1911 he published a book – ''The Religion of a Naturalist'' – expressing his philosophical position as an agnostic.

Queensland Museum

In 1911 Longman moved to Brisbane to take up a position as a member of the staff of the

Queensland Museum The Queensland Museum Kurilpa is the state museum of Queensland, funded by the government, and dedicated to natural history, cultural heritage, science and human achievement. The museum currently operates from its headquarters and general museu ...

, rising to become acting director in 1917 and director in 1918. There the main focus of his interests turned from botany to zoology, especially

vertebrate paleontology Vertebrate paleontology is the subfield of paleontology that seeks to discover, through the study of fossilized remains, the behavior, reproduction and appearance of extinct vertebrates (animals with vertebrae and their descendants). It also t ...

, describing new genera of fish, marine reptiles, dinosaurs and a

marsupial Marsupials are a diverse group of mammals belonging to the infraclass Marsupialia. They are natively found in Australasia, Wallacea, and the Americas. One of marsupials' unique features is their reproductive strategy: the young are born in a r ...

. He wished to make the museum more of an educational institution, rather than a repository of fossils. He acquired for the museum several dinosaur skeletons, including the '' Rhoetosaurus brownei''. He published approximately 70 papers which appeared in the ''Memoirs of the Queensland Museum''. He also wrote a popular column – ''Nature’s ways'' – in the Brisbane ''Courier-Mail''. He retired from the museum in 1945 and died at his home in Brisbane in 1954. He was survived by his wife Irene Longman.

Honours and awards

* President,

Royal Society of Queensland The Royal Society of Queensland was formed in Queensland, Australia in 1884 from the Queensland Philosophical Society, Queensland's oldest scientific institution, with royal patronage granted in 1885. The aim of the Society is "Progressing scie ...

(1919, 1939) * President,

Queensland Naturalists Club The Queensland Naturalists' Club Inc. was founded in Queensland as the Queensland Field Naturalists Club in 1906 to encourage the study, appreciation and preservation of Queensland’s flora and fauna and its environments. It has been known as the ...

* Vice-chairman, Great Barrier Reef Committee * Member,

Australian National Research Council The Australian Academy of Science was founded in 1954 by a group of distinguished Australians, including Australian Fellows of the Royal Society of London. The first president was Sir Mark Oliphant. The academy is modelled after the Royal Soci ...

* Fellow,

Linnean Society of London The Linnean Society of London is a learned society dedicated to the study and dissemination of information concerning natural history, evolution, and Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy. It possesses several important biological specimen, manuscript a ...

* Fellow,

Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI) is a long-established anthropological organisation, and Learned Society, with a global membership. Its remit includes all the component fields of anthropology, such as biolo ...

* Corresponding member,

Zoological Society of London The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) is a charity and organization devoted to the worldwide animal conservation, conservation of animals and their habitat conservation, habitats. It was founded in 1826. Since 1828, it has maintained London Zo ...

* 1946 –

Australian Natural History Medallion The Australian Natural History Medallion is awarded each year by the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria (FNCV) to the person judged to have made the most meritorious contribution to the understanding of Australian natural history. The idea origin ...

* 1952 –

Mueller Medal The Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science (ANZAAS) is an organisation that was founded in 1888 as the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science to promote science. It was modelled on the British ...

ANZAAS > Mueller Medal Recipients (1904-2005)
archive.is Retrieved 12 February 2025.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Longman, Albert Heber 1880 births 1954 deaths People from Wiltshire English emigrants to Australia People from Brisbane Australian paleontologists Directors of museums in Australia 20th-century Australian naturalists