Wilfred Backhouse Alexander

Wilfrid Backhouse Alexander (4 February 1885 – 18 December 1965) was an English ornithologist and entomologist. He was a brother of Horace Alexander and Christopher James Alexander. Alexander was born at Croydon in Surrey, England in 1885, and was introduced to natural history by his two uncles, James and Albert Crosfield. He was educated at Bootham School in York and Tonbridge School in Kent, and went on to study Natural Science at Cambridge University. During this time his main interest was botany, graduating in 1909 with first class honours. After graduation he stayed in Cambridge for a short time working as assistant superintendent of the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology and assistant demonstrator in Zoology and Comparative Anatomy for Cambridge University. In 1911, he took a job with the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries as an assistant naturalist on an international exploration of the North Sea, but in August that year, he obtained the appointment of Assistant at the Western Australian Museum. He moved to Australia in early 1912 to take up the position, which he held for three years before being made Keeper of Biology at the museum. He made a number of expeditions to collect material for the museum including the Percy Sladen Trust Expedition to the Abrolhos Islands in 1913. He became Honorary Secretary of and co-editor of the journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia in 1914. In 1916, the museum was under severe financial pressure and Alexander was granted leave without pay to take up a position as science abstractor to the Advisory Council of Science and Industry in Melbourne. He held this position until 1919, when he returned to the Western Australian Museum for a short time. During this period he also acted as librarian to the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union, which he became vice-president of from 1923–25. He was also editor of the union's journal, Emu, from 1924–25. In 1920 the Commonwealth Prickly Pear Board was formed with the purpose of finding a way to control the several species of Opuntia that were taking over vast areas of subtropical eastern Australia and W.