Ralph Tate

Background

Tate was born at Alnwick in Northumberland, the son of Thomas Turner Tate (1807–1888), a teacher of mathematics and science, and his wife Frances (née Hunter).

Education

Tate was educated at the Cheltenham Training College and at the Royal School of Mines. There he studied botany, publishing his Flora Belfastiensis in 1863, while also investigating the Cretaceous and Triassic rocks of Antrim, the results of which he presenting to the Geological Society of London.

Career

In 1864 Tate was appointed assistant at the museum of that society. In 1866 he wrote three botanical papers, and also published A Plain and Easy Account of the Land and Freshwater Mollusks of Great Britain. In 1867 he went on an exploring expedition to Nicaragua and Venezuela.

In 1871 he was appointed to the mining school established by the Cleveland ironmasters first at Darlington and later at Redcar.

Here he made a special study of the Lias and its fossils, in conjunction with the Review J. F. Blake, the results being published in an important work, The Yorkshire Lias (1876), in which the life-history of the strata was first worked out in detail.

In 1875 Tate was appointed Elder Professor of natural science at the University of Adelaide in South Australia, teaching botany, zoology and geology. He became vice-president and then as president (1878–1879) of the Philosophical Society.

lieutenant changed name to the Royal Society of South Australia in 1880 with Tate as its first president in that year Tate encouraged members to send in original papers, personally contributing nearly 100 papers to its Transactions and Proceedings.

In 1882 Tate first travelled to the Northern Territory and made a valuable report on its geological and mineralogical characteristics. In 1883 he became a fellow of the Linnean Society, and in 1888 was president of the biological section at the meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science. Five years later Tate was president of the meeting of this association held at Adelaide.

Tate gave special attention to the Recent and Tertiary mollusca of Australia, and discovered evidence of Permian glaciation of southern Australia at Hallett Cove.

He published his valuable Handbook of the Flora of Extratropical South Australia in 1890. In 1893 he was awarded the Clarke Medal by the Royal Society of New South Wales.

Tate paid a visit to England at the end of 1896 partly for the good of his health, but early in 1901 it began to fail again and he died on 20 September 1901.

Achievements

• Tate made a valuable report on its geological and mineralogical characteristics of Northern Territory. He also discovered evidence of Permian glaciation of southern Australia at Hallett Cove.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A Handbook of the Flora of Extratropical South Australia, Containing the Flowering Plants and Ferns

    (Leopold is delighted to publish this classic book as part...)

  • Journal of the Horn Scientific Exploring Expedition, 1894, and Report of the Physical Geography of Central Australia

    (Leopold is delighted to publish this classic book as part...)

  • Transactions and Proceedings and Report of the Royal Society of South Australia

    (This book an EXACT reproduction of the original book publ...)

  • A Plain and Easy Account of the Land and Fresh-Water Mollusks of Great Britain

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

Membership

In 1894 he was a member of the Horn Expedition to Central Australia, writing the palaeontology report in collaboration with J. A. Watt, the general geology report, and the botany report with Joseph Maiden.

Connections

Father:

Thomas Turner Tate