2002 Annual Report Of The Royal Society of New Zealand

Incorporating the 2002 Academy Council Yearbook

Richard Kenneth Dell

QSO DSc Vict FRSNZ FMANZ

1920 - 2002

RICHARD ("DICK") KENNETH DELL died in Wellington on 6 March 2002 after a long illness. He was a scholar of considerable breadth and many interests, a major figure in the development of New Zealand museums, a tireless contributor to the work of the Royal Society of New Zealand and other scientific and cultural organisations and, in the words of a niece, a person of "gentle nature and calm good sense". His younger colleagues have described him as "the last of the immediate past generation of `giants' of New Zealand malacology". His principal research, for which he was internationally famous, was on Mollusca (particularly Antarctica, New Zealand deep water forms, and Cephalopods), on which he published several major monographs and more than 150 papers, and described more than 300 new species. He also published on crabs, whales, marine biology generally, birds, the history of science, and biographies of scientists.

Early life and education

Dick Dell was born in Auckland on 11 July 1920. His parents were living on Waiheke Island at the time, but soon moved to the mainland and he grew up on a small farmlet near Avondale. An only child, he did well at school, winning a scholarship to Mt Albert Grammar from Avondale Primary School and becoming the first member of his family to go to university. One of Dick's grandmothers had been unable to read or write, and

Dick often pointed to himself as an example of the opportunities afforded by the New Zealand education system at that time. Among his contemporaries at Mt Albert Grammar were Dick Matthews, Ted Bollard and Robert Muldoon. The first two, along with Eric Godley, would become part of his group of friends at university.

Family finances were limited and Dick opted for a teaching career, attending Auckland University College and Auckland Teachers College, in order to pay his way through university. For similar reasons, he studied for a BA degree, which he considered cheaper, easier and better for teaching than a BSc. However, his scientific interests were already well established and he was able to include some scientific papers in his BA.

He had begun collecting bones and shells as a child. When he was 13, he and another boy started a museum in half an old fowl house in the back yard of his home. His parents supported what he himself later described as a "growing mania" for shell collecting. They gave him a copy of Suter's Manual, which he "read like a novel". He joined AWB (Baden) Powell's Auckland Museum Conchology Club, where he first met the young Charles Fleming. The two became life-long friends. From Baden, Dick learned methods of curation of research collections, use of literature, and methods of identification. Baden also taught him how to use a plate camera, develop negatives and prepare prints. In his obituary of Baden Powell (Proceedings 116, 1988) Dick described his early experiences at the Auckland Museum as follows:

The writer, as a diffident and shy schoolboy, having shown interest, was encouraged as a voluntary assistant at the museum during vacations and spent days of utter joy sorting dredgings and shell sand, putting new reprints away in order and cleaning specimens.

Dick himself would later encourage other school boys, who in turn went on to become malacologists, by employing them to do similar work.

After obtaining his first degree and teaching certificate, and completing his probationary teaching year, Dick spent time as a relieving teacher. He had actually been appointed to a school in the Chatham Islands when war service intervened. After territorial training and service in 1941, he embarked on active service in the Pacific in 1942 - 1944, followed by service in Egypt and Italy in 1945. Like many other scholars who went abroad in the armed services, he took any opportunity he could to make scientific observations or collections. In New Caledonia, he found himself in the same anti-aircraft unit as Vic Fisher, Ethnologist at the Auckland Museum, and together they collected shells and potsherds on the occasional day off-duty. Collecting opportunities improved in the Solomons. With difficulty, Dick sent back molluscan collections to Baden Powell to care for until his return. He later gave them to the Dominion Museum, and described some in publications.

Scientist and scholar

Back in New Zealand in 1946, Dick resumed work as a relieving teacher at schools in the Auckland area and completed a Diploma in Education, awarded in 1947. Early in 1946, his old mentor, Baden Powell, had encouraged him to apply for a position as Conchologist at the then Dominion Museum. After a long and nerve-racking period without any news about the job, he finally received a telegram from Dr Oliver, the then Director saying "Start any time convenient to you". The die was cast; he took up the position early in 1947 and began his 33-year period of service to the museum. This was the busy period leading up to the reopening of the Museum after the war and all hands were expected to pitch in and help with all manner of tasks. He became progressively

Senior Scientific Officer (1957 - 61), Assistant Director (to Dr Falla, 1961 - 66), and Director (1966 - 80). After he retired, he continued to work as an Honorary Research Associate until the year before his death.

Newly married (he had married Miriam Matthews in August 1946) and settled in Wellington, Dick embarked on further study while working full-time at the Museum.

He was able to cross-credit some scientific papers and completed his BSc at Victoria University College in 1948. He gained his MSc in 1950, with a pioneering study on New Zealand Cephalopods, which was published as Dominion Museum Bulletin 16 in 1952. Immediately after the war, pyrex dishes were among the few items available for wedding presents and the Dells had been given a great many of these. While Dick worked on his thesis research, their home was filled with pyrex dishes containing cephalopods.

Before he had completed his studies, Dick was already publishing scientific papers, mainly on molluscs, but also on birds, fish and animal communities. By the time he was awarded the Royal Society of New Zealand's Hamilton Prize in 1955 he had published 32 papers.

At the same time, he was actively developing the mollusc collection at the Dominion Museum. When he took up the appointment he found what has been described as a "relatively small, chaotic, quaintly stored collection of a mere 5000 lots, mostly dating from Colonial Museum times". Over the next 10 years he built up the collection to more than 30,000 lots and developed a new standardised storage system for it. He thus laid the basis for what is now an internationally significant collection.

As soon as he arrived in Wellington, he began intensive fieldwork in the areaat Horowhenua, Kapiti Island, Cook Strait and Wellington Harbour, and fossil collecting in the Wairarapa. From 1948 onwards, major collecting expeditions further afield included Mt Arthur Tableland, Cook Strait Islands and Marlborough Sounds, Stewart and Codfish Islands, Fiordland Expedition to Caswell Sound, Antipodes and Bounty Islands, East Cape, Galathea Expedition in the area around the Kermadec Islands, Chatham Islands Expedition 1954, Auckland and Enderby Islands, Otago Heads, Stewart and Solander Islands, Antarctica - Ross Sea, Tui Cruise to Norfolk Island, and the Royal Society of New Zealand's Solomon Islands Expedition 1965.

Among the most important field trips Dick was involved in was the Chatham Islands Expedition of 1954. This was the first major oceanographic expedition beyond the shelf edge around New Zealand and led to one of Dick's most important contributions to knowledge of New Zealand molluscan fauna"The archibenthal Mollusca of New Zealand", published as Dominion Museum Bulletin 18 in 1956. For this he was awarded a DSc.

In 1959 - 1961, Dick was awarded a Nuffield Travelling Fellowship to work on the collections of New Zealand Mollusca at the British Museum (Natural History) in London. He and his family thrived in this environment and when he was offered a permanent position there, none of them wanted to leave London. However, Dick considered himself bonded to the Dominion Museum, which had granted him leave to take up this opportunity, and a strong moral sense of what was right obliged him to return to New Zealand. In 1961 he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

He now turned his attention to Antarctic collections, publishing a major monograph in 1964 ("Antarctic and Subantarctic Mollusca, Bivalvia, Amphineura and Scaphopoda" Discovery Reports 33: 93 - 250) and several other papers during the 1960s. He was awarded

the Hector Medal in 1965. He resumed work on Ross Sea molluscs after his retirement as Director of the Museum, eventually publishing a monograph on them in 1990 (Royal Society of New Zealand Bulletin 27).

During the latter part of his career, Dick became increasingly interested in the history of science in New Zealand. He was the Convenor of the Working Group to select scientists to be included in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography 1984 - 91, and himself prepared entries for eight scientists.

Museum Director

In 1966, Dick Dell succeeded Dr R. A. Falla as Director of the then Dominion Museum. As the sixth Director of what had begun as the Colonial Museum in 1865, he inherited a 100-year-old museum with a staff of only 22, including 7 curators. Several positions were vacant. The Museum was severely handicapped by shortage of space both for display and for storage of collections. The budget was small and inadequate. Dick set himself the task of transforming this institution into a national museum of which New Zealand could be proud. This involved him in constant battles with the Department of Internal Affairs, which was responsible for both the Museum and the National Art Gallery, and caused him very considerable frustrations.

By 1969, the staff had been built up to its full establishment, with the vacant positions filled or about to be filled. Dick then began to work towards the appointment of technicians to assist curators, additional curatorial appointments, and a salary scale for curators comparable to that of other government scientists. In 1980, the museum had a staff of 38, including 14 curators and technicians, and salaries of qualified curatorial staff were based on the science scale in the Public Service and subject to external biennial review. Although this was a period of expansion generally in New Zealand, it was a time of budgetary restrictions and staff ceilings for Government departments and it was by no means easy to increase the staff establishment of the Museum.

Along with the increases in staff came focused collection development policies, great growth in the national collections, regular fieldwork and a steady flow of scientific publications. Under Dick's direction, it was not only the natural history side of the museum that expanded. He increased the Ethnology staff and established a position in Colonial History. He obtained special funds from Government to purchase Maori items at auction. He was anxious to increase Maori involvement in the Museum, and from 1974 worked closely with Graham Latimer and later also with Maui Pomare as members of the Board of the Trustees and the National Museum Council.

Much more frustrating was the attempt to get more space. New Zealand now had a proper national museum in terms of its collections and professional staff but it was still operating in a totally inadequate space. Building extensions were planned, then shelved, then dusted off only to be shelved again. His plans for the reorganisation of the galleries to show the history of New Zealand's geological formation, the origin of its distinctive plants and animals, its settlement and modification by Polynesians, and then the disruptive arrival of Europeans, as well as his long-term plan for a new gallery showing the diversity of New Zealand invertebrate life and the characteristic features of the New Zealand shoreline and marine flora and fauna were still unrealised when he retired.

In the first annual report after he became Director, Dick Dell stated quite clearly that

The functions of a museum are generally accepted as falling into three main categories of approximately equal importance:

Public relations and education;

Care and development of collections;

Research upon the collections and in relevant fields.

Despite the idea that has grown up since the advent of Te Papa that curators in the 'old museum' engaged in arcane and quite possibly self-serving research unrelated to the mission of the institution they worked for, this division of labour was applied to the work of individual curators, and not merely to the overall work of the museum. Curators were expected to divide their time more or less equally between the three activities. Dick himself had done this brilliantly when he was Conchologist. His contributions to the second and third categories have already been described. But he always regarded himself very much as an educator and made a notable contribution in this area as well.

For museum curators, exhibitions should be a major component of their educational/public relations activities, but for many staff in the Dominion/National Museum, shortage of finance and space for exhibitions frustrated their ability to make this kind of contribution. There are, however, other ways, and in these Dick Dell gave a shining lead. Following the example of his mentor, Baden Powell and his Auckland Museum Conchology Club, Dick founded the Wellington Shell Club in 1955. He gave WEA courses, Natural History radio talks, and Adult Education lectures. He shared his knowledge and enthusiasm as widely as he could and reached out to a general audience with his numerous contributions to New Zealand's Nature Heritage in 1974 and 1975, and to a much greater audience again with his popular books on Native Shells (six editions from 1955 to 1972), Native Crabs (1963) and, with Eric Heath, Seashore Life in New Zealand (1971) and Seashore Life (1981, reprinted 1985, 1989, and 1993).

Dick's contributions to museums in New Zealand did not stop there. He carried out detailed research into the history of the Colonial Museum and its successorsthe Dominion and National Museumswhich was published only in abbreviated form at the centenary of the national institution in 1965. He contributed biographies of three of its previous directors (Hector, Hamilton and Falla) to the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, and he brought his knowledge and skills as a Museum scientist and director to such diverse organisations as the Trust Boards of the Nelson Provincial Museum and Army Memorial Museum, the Councils of the Air Force Museum and the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, and the Turnbull House Advisory Committee. He was elected a Fellow of the Art Galleries and Museums Association of New Zealand (AGMANZ) in 1957, and served eight years on its Council and one term as President.

Science and the Community

Dick believed strongly in the support and promotion of science and his wide intellectual interests led him to become involved with a great range of scientific societies and organisations beyond the museum world.

He was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1961, and served the Society in many capacities between 1962 and 1988. At various times he was Chairman of the Wellington Branch, a long-serving Council member, Vice-President, Home Secretary, and President of the Society itself, Member of Appeal Committee and Chairman of the National Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE), Honorary Editor and member of the Publications Committee. He served on several of the Society's National Committees and on the Council of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science (ANZAAS) and represented the Society on a number of public bodies.

Dick's involvement in the Royal Society of New Zealand spanned a period of major growth and reorganisation following the passing of its 1965 Act. In his final Presidential address to Fellows in 1981 (Proceedings 109), he reflected on that period of growth and looked to the future. As a biologist, he considered that

The principles of evolution, natural selection, survival of the fittest and the production of sufficient variation to allow these processes to select the best forms to survive in a changing environment are just as important in institutions as they are in species.

He predicted in future "a rather different Society; a Society that will fit our New Zealand requirements and one that has tailored itself to its environment." As President, he supported the greater involvement of Member Bodies and individuals who were not Fellows in the affairs of the Society. He saw the need to broaden the Fellowship in terms of disciplines, and was a strong advocate for the election of more women. While he always upheld the central importance of original research as the primary criterion for electing Fellows, he also saw that the Society needed to use all the diverse skills it could draw on to become the influential and effective body he believed it could and should be.

Dick's involvement in the promotion and management of scientific and cultural matters extended far beyond the Royal Society of New Zealand. I got to know him during his 10-year service on the New Zealand Historic Places Trust (1968 - 1978). This was only one of many committees, including the New Zealand Oceanographic Committee (1949 - 1958, 1961), Cook Bicentenary Committee (1966 - 1967), University Extension Advisory Committee ((1967 - 1973), UNESCO Science Subcommission (1967 - 1976), Ross Dependency Research Committee (1967 - 1980), Commission of Enquiry on Organisation of Wildlife Management and Research in New Zealand (1968), Man and the Biosphere (1971 - 1978), and the Wildlife Research Working Party of the National Research Council (1977).

Particularly important to him were the Scientific Committee on Oceanographic Research (SCOR) (1965 - 1966), the Special Committee for Antarctic Research (SCAR) (1969 - 1977), and the National Parks and Reserves Authority (1981 - 1990), including seven years as Chairman of the Protected Natural Areas Liaison Committee, and as the Authority's representative on the New Zealand Committee of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. His work for the National Parks and Reserves Authority gave him enormous pleasure in his retirement.

He was also involved in various professional associations, including the New Zealand Ecological Society (Council member, President), The Malacological Society of London (Council member) and the New Zealand Marine Sciences Society, of which he was a Foundation member (Council member, President).

Dick Dell was awarded Denmark's Galathea Medal in 1956, Her Majesty's Silver Jubilee Medal in 1977, The Queen's Service Order in 1981 and the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal.

Personal qualities

Dick's life and work were driven by a passion for learning and a respect for nature. "Put the rock (or boulder or log) back" was a well-known catch-cry among family and colleagues alike. He set high standards of scholarship and professionalism for himself and others.

He was a devoted family man, loving and supportive to his wife and four daughters. In an extremely busy and at times stressful professional life, he always found time to be involved in his daughters' activities, from school and guides to archaeology. He was the king of April Fool jokes. Latterly he was a much loved grandfather and great-grandfather. He also enjoyed the love and respect of his wider extended family.

Many people have commented on his gentleness, his humane approach to his staff, his patience, and his friendliness towards young and old regardless of position or status. When I mentioned to my 22-year-old daughter that I was writing about Dr Dell, a former Director of the Museum, her immediate response was "I knew Dick Dell. He was a nice man". She had worked briefly in Te Papa's Tory Street store where Dick continued his research almost until the end of his life, but at a period when he came in only occasionally; I had no idea she had ever met him. For me her reaction summed up one of his most important qualities.

It could of course be argued that he was too niceif he had been meaner, tougher, and more personally ambitious, might he have achieved more for the Museum in terms of money and space? I doubt it. He certainly found the endless petty politics within and beyond the museum distasteful, but his calm, reasoned and persistent approach probably achieved all that was possible under the circumstances. Persistence (which he himself described as pigheadedness) was certainly a characteristic, but it was always tempered with humour and the good judgement for which he was renowned.

Many people have also paid tribute to his skills as a committee member and particularly as a chairman. He was a clear and logical thinker with the ability to listen to and guide discussion rather than leading too strongly. In this capacity he made a major contribution to the development of policies and programmes of great significance to the protection and enhancement of both the terrestrial and marine environment in New Zealand.

At the end of his obituary of Baden Powell, Dick observed that immortality could be achieved in many ways. Many of Dick's own achievements were similar to Baden'sa great volume of published work, the description of large numbers of new species, an important research collection, inculcating a love of nature through semi-popular books, encouraging hobby interests of shell collectors, mentoring younger colleagues to continue research on molluscs. But perhaps Dick's greatest legacies will prove to be his wide-ranging contributions to the advancement of science in New Zealand and to the conservation of the natural environment he loved.

A full bibliography of R. K. Dell's publications, compiled by Alan Beu, Bruce Marshall and Winston Ponder, is published in Molluscan Research 23 (1) March 2003.

I am grateful to Sue Bradford, Elliott Dawson, Sharon Dell, Michael Fitzgerald, Bruce Marshall, Peter Matthews and John Yaldwyn, and above all to Dame Miriam Dell, for their assistance.

Janet Davidson FRSNZ