William Aitcheson Haswell - Career

Career

Haswell arrived in Sydney in late 1878 and soon began work in a small marine zoological laboratory at Watson's Bay. There he researched the collections from the Chevert expedition to New Guinea, and on the marine fauna of Port Jackson and the adjacent coast. Haswell was elected a member of the Linnean Society of New South Wales in April 1879, when he had already contributed five papers to the Proceedings. He accepted a post as curator at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, but moved back to Sydney after one year in the position. In 1881 he collected specimens along the tropical coast of Queensland as a guest on HMS Alert. In 1881 Sir William Macleay arranged for him to give a course of public lectures on zoology. At the University of Sydney, he was appointed professor of biology in 1889.

Haswell was acting-curator of the Australian museum for part of 1882, and compiled a Catalogue of the Australian Stalk- and Sessile-eyed Crustacea which was published in that year. In the same year he was appointed demonstrator, and later, lecturer, in the subjects of zoology, comparative anatomy, and histology at the university of Sydney. He was much interested in the fauna of the New South Wales coast, and especially in the Crustacea, Annelida and Bryozoa, but also did other work covering a wide field. When the Challis professorship of biology was founded in 1889, Haswell was given the position and held it until its division in 1913. In 1893 he published in the Macleay Memorial Volume "A Monograph of the Temnocephaleae", a group which retained his interest for the remainder of his life. He collaborated with Charles Hedley and Sir Joseph Verco in investigating the continental shelf.

In January 1898 appeared Haswell's best known publication A Text Book of Zoology (London) written in conjunction with Thomas Jeffery Parker of the University of Otago, New Zealand. Despite being over 1400 pages, the book was described by the authors as being "strictly adapted to the needs of the beginner". On account of Parker's death the second edition of this standard text book, which appeared in 1910, was prepared by Haswell, as was also the edition which came out in January 1922. A fourth edition was released in 1928 and it remained a standard in Australian zoology courses for decades. He also published a Manual of Zoology in 1899 which was reprinted in 1908. In 1913 a chair of botany was created at the university of Sydney and Haswell became professor of zoology.