Background

Barry Fell was born as Howard Barraclough Fell on June 6, 1917, in Lewes, Sussex, United Kingdom. He was the son of Howard Towne Fell and Elsie Martha (Johnston) Fell, and a grandson of the railway engineer and inventor John Barraclough Fell. Fell with his mother moved to New Zealand in the early 1920s after the death of his father, who was a merchant seaman.

Education

Fell had attended Wellington College for five years from 1930, he received prizes for his scholarship in science there. In 1935 he entered Victoria University College, then a college of the University of New Zealand, where he completed a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees with First Class Honours in Botany in 1938. Fell finally earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1941.

Career

Early in his career, Fell served in the British Army Royal Engineers during World War II. After the war, he joined the faculty at the University of Wellington in New Zealand, a post he held from 1946 to the mid-1960s. At that time, Fell came to the United States to accept a position at the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and to become a professor at Harvard University in 1965. He retired from Harvard in 1977 and a year later Fell accepted a job as a visiting professor at the University of Tripoli in Libya. He devoted much of his career to the study of living and fossilized echinoderms, commonly referred to as sea urchins and starfish. Fell gained critical success with the 1989 reissue of America B.C., originally published in 1977 and Penned under the name Barry Fell.

Fell authored numerous books on his two major interests—marine sciences and anthropology. He contributed numerous articles to scientific journals and encyclopedias, he also edited several periodicals, including Occasional Papers of the Epigraphic Society. His other works include New Zealand Sea-stars, Native Sea Stars, Physiology of Echinoderms (with R. Boolootian) and Deep Sea Photography (with J. B. Hersey). He also wrote several publications under the name of Barry Fell, including Introduction to Marine Biology, Dwellers in the Sea, Saga America and Bronze Age America.

Achievements

• Fell became one of the foremost authorities on the study of living and fossilized echinoderms - sea urchins and starfish. His 1989 reissue of America B.C. became very popular.
  
  Fell was awarded the Hector Medal and the Hutton Medal from the Royal Society of New Zealand, in 1959 and 1962 respectively. He was also a 1990 gold medalist of the Institute for the Study of America Cultures.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Bronze-Age America

    (Based on recent archaeological discoveries, this study ex...)

    1982
  • Life, space, and time

    (A course in environmental biology)

    1974
  • Saga America 1980
  • America's Links with Bronze Age Europe 1982
  • America B. C. 1989
  • Introduction to marine biology 1975
  • Dwellers in the Sea 1976

Membership

Fell was a fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and a fellow emeritus of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as a president emeritus of the Epigraphic Society and an honorary fellow of the Portuguese Society of Anthropology and Ethnology.

• He was a president.

  New Zealand Association of Scientists , New Zealand

  1948 - 1949

Connections

Fell married Renee Clarkson on October 10, 1042. The marriage produced three children - Roger Barraclough, Francis Julian and Veronica Irene.

Father:

Howard Towne Fell

Mother:

Elsie Martha (Johnston) Fell

Spouse:

Renee Clarkson

child:

Francis Julian Fell

child:

Roger Barraclough Fell

child:

Veronica Irene Fell