Edgar Ravenswood Waite, Director of the South Australian Museum, 1914-1928.

Waite was a zoologist, herpetologist, ornithologist and ichthyologist, becoming a world authority on the fishes of the Australasian-Antarctic region. He participated in many scientific expeditions throughout the region, including trawling expeditions and Sir Douglas Mawson's first sub Antarctic cruise in 1912, Waite published extensively on the results of these journeys. After leading the South Australia Museum’s expedition to Strzelecki and Cooper Creeks (1916), Waite published the results a year later in the Transactions of the Royal Society, South Australia. In 1918 Waite made collecting trips to New Guinea, New Britain and New Ireland, and in 1926 inspected museums in the United States of America and Europe. The Waite Collection includes over seventy detailed diaries that Waite wrote throughout his lifetime from August 1874 until January 1928, which include accounts of his scientific field work, camping trips, his curatorial and professional duties, musical interests and personal reflections along with pencil and ink sketches. The diaries are a remarkable view of the scientists, scientific institutions and museums of Waite's generation.

Almost half of Waite's publications, many of which were illustrated, were on fish. Among his major contributions were The fishes of South Australia (1923) and The reptiles and amphibians of South Australia (1929, edited by H. M. Hale). While in Adelaide he initiated and edited the Records of the South Australian Museum. Waite was also an editor of the South Australian handbooks committee of the British Science Guild, a member of the Flora and Fauna Board of South Australia and of the Linnean Society of New South Wales and a founding member and president of the South Australian Aquarium Society, he was Vice President of the Royal Society of South Australia at the time of his death. Although of a quiet and reserved personality, Waite possessed an incredible enthusiasm and energy which he extended to interests as varied as motor cycling, drawing, painting, photography and playing the flute.

Born at Leeds, England on 5 May 1866, the second son of John Waite, bankers clerk, and his wife Jane, née Vause, Waite received his scientific education at the Victoria University of Manchester. In 1888 he was appointed Assistant-Curator of the Leeds Museum and in 1891, Curator of the Leeds Museum. On 7 April 1892, he married Rose Edith Green, at St Matthew's parish church, Leeds. During 1893-1905 he was appointed as the Assistant Curator in charge of vertebrates at the Australian Museum, Sydney. In 1906 he was appointed Curator of the Canterbury Museum at Christchurch, New Zealand then in 1914 he was appointed Director of the South Australian Museum, Adelaide. In early 1928 he had left Adelaide to attend a meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science in Tasmania when he was taken ill. He died on 19 January, 1928 from enteric fever in Highbury Hospital, Hobart, he was survived by his wife and son Claude Raymond Waite.