George Arnold

George Arnold at the age of 30, on 11 November 1911, took up the appointment as Curator of the newly built Rhodesia Museum in Eighth Avenue, Bulawayo.

He continued to serve the museum as Curator, Director and in an honorary capacity until he died more than 50 years later. From 1915-1925 he was quite alone in the Museum and until 1947 he was the only zoologist, having to undertake curatorial work on vertebrates as well was his own specialist field. In 1917 he also took part in the excavation of Bambata Cave in the Matopo Hills, the first Stone Age “dig” ever to be undertaken in this country. During his service he saw the museum grow from a single-gallery building with no storage or laboratory space to a large square building with seven public galleries, together with laboratories, offices, storerooms and workshops. At the end of this life the Museum had outgrown the buildings erected during his time and he died as his successors moved into the present building. George Arnold was an entomologist specializing in the taxonomy of African Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps), in which he was recognized as a world authority on Ethiopian Shegidae and Pompilidae and the Formicidae of Southern and South-Central Africa. He also contributed to our knowledge of the Mutilidae of Zimbabwe. In 1947 he was asked to retire but he did not cease working and was not only maintaining his section of the insect collection but was writing scientific papers when over eighty years of age. He was awarded Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Society of Entomology and the Fellowship of the Royal Society of South Africa. Sadly his Hymenoptera collection was sent to the Iziko Museum of Cape Town in exchange for the Zimbabwe Birds.

He died in 1962.