Donald George Broadley

Zoologist and National History Museum Curator

Background:
Dr Donald Broadley emigrated to Zimbabwe in 1954 and in 1956 he became the Curator of Herpetology and Director of Mutare Museum. 

In 1959 he was appointed Director of the Salisbury Snake Park where he experienced two serious snake bites from a puffadder (the attack cost him a finger) and a boomslang. Running the snake park left no time for him to engage in field work of research and finally joined the museum service as Assistant Keeper of Zoology in 1961, and moved the herpetological collections of 6000 specimens to Mutare.

He obtained his doctorate for his thesis on the herpetology of South East Africa. He published papers on the ecology, taxonomy and zoogeography of African reptiles and 1981 he was elected a fellow of the Zimbabwe Scientific Association.

In 1981 Dr. Broadley transferred to the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo together with the herpetological collections (now 40 000 specimens). Due to his outstanding contribution to science, publishing over 280 papers, he had achieved many awards and fellowships to various societies. He officially retired from the museum service in 1995 but continued to work and publish on the collections as a Research Associate from 1997 until June 2010, when he was appointed Curator Emeritus.

Broadley died on the 10 march 2016 at his Matsheumhlope home in Bulawayo aged 84.

Accolades and Recognition:

• Dr Broadly died an internationally acclaimed herpetologist, he has been described as Africa’s highest herpetologist after collecting over 52000 species of reptiles and amphibians.
• He was ranked as third world’s most productive living author of reptiles, after Albert Karl Ludwig Gunther who discovered and named 340 reptile species and George Albert Boulenger who gave scientific names to over 2 000 species of reptiles.
• Reputed to have possesed an ability to speak with reptiles of which 12 species of snakes were named after him