George Edward Dobson

George Edward Dobson FRS (4 September 1848 at Edgeworthstown, County Longford, Ireland – 26 November 1895) was a zoologist, photographer and army surgeon.

He was the eldest son of Parke Dobsonand was educated at the Royal School Enniskillen and then at Trinity College, Dublin. He gained the degrees of Bachelor of Arts in 1866, Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery and Master of Surgery in 1867 and Master of Arts in 1875.

In 1872 he was posted to the Andaman Islands, where he made a number of anthropological photographs of the Andamanese. He became an army surgeon after 1867 serving in India, a posting he kept until his retirement in 1888.

Around 1878, he became curator of the Royal Victoria Museum at Netley.

Dobson was an expert on small mammals, especially bats ( the Chiroptera) and Insectivora. He was a member of several scientific societies, the Royal Society (elected 1883), the Linnean Society of London and the Zoological Society of London. He was a corresponding member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and of the Biological Society of Washington.

• Catalogue of the Chiroptera in Collection of British Museum (1878)
• Monograph of the Asiatic Chiroptera (1876)
• A Monograph of the Insectivora, systematic and anatomical (three parts, John Van Voorst, Londres, 1882-1890.

In addition Dobson also contributed to the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica where he wrote the accounts about the vampyre bats, the moles and the shrews.