PEARSON, Joseph. Yorkshire 19.4.1881 — Tasmania 20.6.1971. British Zoologist and Marine Biologist also interested in History, in Sri Lanka and Australia. Son of Daniel Pearson and Cecilia Parr. Educated at Liverpool College, then at university there. B.Sc. 1902, Liverpool, then postgraduate studies at Manchester. In 1910-33 Director of Colombo Museum. Then Director of Tasmanian Museum in Hobart in 1934-52. D.Sc. Liverpool. Married Lillia McConnell (d. 1941), then Mavis Meadowcroft (d. 1961), children.

Publications: With A. K. Coomaraswamy: Bronzes from Ceylon, Chiefly in the Colombo Museum. Memoirs of The Colombo Museum A1. Colombo 1914.

– Sinhalese banners and standards. 42 p. 36 pl. Memoirs of the Colombo Museum A2. Colombo 1916.

– “Note on an ivory panel in the Colombo Museum”, JRAS-CB 29:75, 1922, 2-5; “Notes on the forts of the Jaffna islands”, JRAS-CB 29:76, 1923, 186-193; “European chairs in Ceylon in the seven-teenth and eighteenth centuries”, JRAS-CB 31:81, 1928, 77-101; “The Throne of the Kings of Kandy”, JRAS-CB 31:82, 1929, 380-383.

– Editor of the Memoirs of the Colombo Museum and Spolia Zeylanica.

– Biological writings.

Sources: Stray notes in Internet; Wikipedia.