Edward J. Miers

Edward John Miers FZS FLS (1851– 15 October 1930) was a British zoologist and curator of the crustacean collection at the Natural History Museum in London. He contributed to the scientific reports from the Challenger expedition of 1872–1876, and described 32 new genera and at least 260 new species and subspecies of decapod crustaceans, along with four genera and 72 new species in other orders. Biography Miers was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1851 to the civil engineer Francis Charles Miers and his wife. His grandfather was the engineer and botanist John Miers, and his younger brother (born 1858) was the mineralogist Sir Henry Alexander Miers. Francis Miers retired in 1860 and left South America for England, where Edward was educated at the Summerfield School, Oxford, before being sent for a year to the Academy in Lausanne (which would later become the University of Lausanne). Miers was appointed curator of the crustacean collections at the Natural History Museum in April or May 1872, taking over from Arthur Gardiner Butler who had been curator of insects, crustaceans, myriapods and arachnids. Miers was charged solely with the Crustacea and "to act as amanuensis to Dr. Gray" (John Edward Gray).