Queensland Museum Honorary Researcher of insects/invertebrates Geoff Monteith has been hailed as one of the world’s top 10 most commemorated scientists based on the number of species named in their honour.

Dr Monteith, former Senior Curator of Entomology at Queensland Museum joins the ranks alongside celebrated historical figures in science including Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.

The list was compiled by Stephen Heard, a biologist at the University of New Brunswick (Canada) in his book Charles Darwin’s Barnacle and David Bowie’s Spider: How Scientific Names Celebrate Adventurers, Heroes, and Even a Few Scoundrels.

At the time of publishing, Dr Monteith had 225 species and 15 genera named after him. Throughout his career, he has been a major force in the collection and survey of rainforest invertebrates, both in Australia and nearby overseas countries since the early 1960s, carrying out collecting surveys in all major rainforest areas in Australia.

Dr Monteith who worked as Senior Curator of Entomology at Queensland Museum has contributed significantly to the taxonomy of Australian insects and in the Wet Tropics Zone of North Queensland alone, he has collected more than 200,000 insects.

Queensland Museum’s entomology collection has hundreds of thousands of specimens collected by Dr Monteith.

Top 10 worldwide scientists with most number of named species in their honour

• Charles Darwin, Geologist England
• Alfred Russel Wallace, Biologist England
• Joseph Dalton Hooker, Botanist, England
• William Jackson Hooker, Botanist, England
• Alexander von Humboldt, Plymath, Germany
• Augusto Weberbauer, Botanist, Germany
• Julian Steyermark, Botanist, USA
• Cyrus Guernsey Pringle, Botanist, USA
• Willy Kuschel, Entomologist, New Zealand
• Geoffrey Monteith Entomologist, Queensland, Australia, Queensland Museum