Dr Kees Rookmaaker
Kees worked for many years on the Darwin Online and Wallace Online projects.
Kees studied biology specialising in mammalian taxonomy and history of zoology, finalised with a Ph.D. from the University of Utrecht in 1989. He is interested in a large range of subjects in the history of natural history as well as everything connected with research and conservation of rhinoceroses.
He is Chief Editor of the Rhino Resource Center, which aims to collect, preserve and disseminate all available printed information on the five living species of rhinoceros. The holdings include over 13,000 references to rhino publications published between 1500 and the present day, all included in the database on the website, www.rhinoresourcecenter.com.
He is a Senior Member of Wolfson College, Cambridge, a Member of the Council of the Society for the History of Natural History (www.shnh.org), and a Member of the IUCN-SSC Asian Rhino Specialist Group. In 2005 he was awarded The Founder's Medal of the Society for the History of Natural History.
Kees is the author of six books and over 150 articles about zoological exploration in Africa and Indonesia, as well as a variety of aspects of rhinoceros biology and history.
The books are as follows:
Rookmaaker, L.C. 1983. Bibliography of the rhinoceros: an analysis of the literature on the recent rhinoceroses in culture, history and biology. Rotterdam: A.A. Balkema, 292 pp.
Rookmaaker, L.C. 1989. The zoological exploration of Southern Africa 1650-1790. Rotterdam: A.A. Balkema, 368 pp.
Rookmaaker, L.C. 1998. The rhinoceros in captivity: a list of 2439 rhinoceroses kept from Roman times to 1994 [with special assistance by Marvin L. Jones, Heinz-Georg Klös, Richard J Reynolds III]. The Hague: SPB Academic Publishing, 409 pp.
Rookmaaker, L.C. 2004. A Calendar of the historical documents of the University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge 1819-1911. Cambridge: University Museum of Zoology, 287 pp.
Rookmaaker, L.C., Mundy, P.J., Glenn, I., Spary, E.C. 2004. François Levaillant and the Birds of Africa. Johannesburg: Brenthurst Press, 484 pp. Available from http://www.brenthurst.org.za/press.htm
Rookmaaker, L.C. 2008. Encounters with the African rhinoceros: a chronological survey of bibliographical and iconographical sources on rhinoceroses in southern Africa from 1795 to 1875: reconstructing views on classification and changes in distribution. Münster, Schueling Verlag, 1-148, figs. 1-157 [68 in colour], maps A-I [2 in colour], tables 1-47. Available from mail@schueling.de
A full list of his publications is available on www.rhinoresourcecenter.com
Kees also contributed to Charles Darwin's notebooks from the voyage of the Beagle. (Cambridge University Press, 2009, edited by Gordon Chancellor and John van Wyhe).