Sir John Burton ClelandCBE (22 June 1878 – 11 August 1971) was a renowned Australian naturalist, microbiologist, mycologist and ornithologist. He was Professor of Pathology at the University of Adelaide and was consulted on high-level police inquiries, such as the famous Taman Shud Case in 1948 and later. He also studied the transmission of dengue virus by the mosquito Stegomyia fasciata (Aedes aegypti).
Cleland married Dora Isabel Paton (1880–1955) a daughter of Rev David Paton DD (1841–1907), minister of Chalmers Presbyterian Church, North Terrace, Adelaide,[2] and Isabella Ann McGhie née Robson (1847–1933) and they had four daughters and a son. He encouraged them in the sciences:
Dr Margaret Burton Cleland MRCS FRACP (1909–2004) who married Dr John Patrick Horan (1907–1993) MD FRCP FRACP;
DrWilliam Paton 'Bill' Cleland MB FRCP FRCS (1912–2005), who married Norah Goodhart (1914–1994), became a cardio-thoracic surgeon;[3][4]
Joan Burton Cleland (c. 1915–2000) who married Erskine Norman Paton (1922–1985) became an ornithologist;
Elizabeth Robson Cleland (16 October 1910 – 31 January 2005) married (Alfred) Moxon Simpson (1910–2001) on 3 August 1938. Moxon was a son of Alfred Allen Simpson. Elizabeth Simpson was author of The Hahndorf Walkers and The Clelands of Beaumont
Barbara Burton Cleland (1913–?), a mathematics graduate who married Prof Andrew John La Nauze (1911–1990)
Sir Donald MacKinnon Cleland CBE (1901–1975), administrator of Papua New Guinea, was his cousin, the son of Elphinstone Davenport Cleveland (1843–1928) and his second wife Anne Emily MacKinnon (1870–1944).[5]
In 1934–35, he published a two-volume monograph on the fungi of South Australia, one of the most comprehensive reviews of Australian fungi to date.
Along with Charles Duguid and Constance Cooke, he was a board member of South Australia's Aborigines Protection Board after its creation in 1940, established by the Aborigines Act Amendment Act (1939) and "charged with the duty of controlling and promoting the welfare" of Aboriginal people.[6]
Cleland was the pathologist on the infamous Taman Shud Case, in which an unidentified man was discovered dead on a beach 1 December 1948. While Cleland theorised that the man had been poisoned, he found no trace of it. The man was never identified.[citation needed]
Cleland became increasingly interested in wildlife conservation and served as commissioner of the Belair National Park in 1928 and as chairman in 1936–65. He chaired the Flora and Fauna Handbooks Committee of South Australia, and with them oversaw the production of a series of descriptive biological manuals, and other books related to flora, fauna and geology.[8]
^R. V. Southcott, 'Cleland, Sir John Burton (1878–1971)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, [1], published in hardcopy 1981. Retrieved 18 April 2014.
Condon, H.T. (1972). Obituary. John Burton Cleland. Emu 72: 117–118.
Robin, Libby. (2001). The Flight of the Emu: a hundred years of Australian ornithology 1901–2001. Carlton, Vic. Melbourne University Press. ISBN0-522-84987-3
