Shepherd, Clifford Jack (1921-1988)

Clifford Jack Shepherd was born in Cambridge, England in 1921 and was awarded County Major, Trinity Hall and Lord Kitchener scholarships in 1939 and entered Cambridge the same year. He served in the British army during 1940-1945 in the Lincolnshire Regiment and then with the Parachute Regiment, being awarded an M.C. and being wounded and captured at Arnhem. He returned to Cambridge University in 1945, being awarded a Medical Research Council scholarship and completed a research PhD in the Department of Botany in 1951.

After working in Southern Rhodesia and in England he moved, with his wife and  family, to Australia in 1958 joining the CSIRO Division of Plant Industry in Canberra as head of the Microbiology Section, where his professional interests ranged over the fields of plant pathology and taxonomic mycology.  He retired as a Senior Principal Research Scientist  in 1981. 

In a productive career with about 50 publications Dr C. J. Shepherd established a reputation in the plant pathology of Australia, New Zealand, Norfolk Island and New Guinea (where he was an invited member of an international biological expedition in 1969). He was responsible for compiling the first lists of plant pathologists in Australia and was a member of the Australian Plant Culture Committee for many years. He was a foundation member of the A.C.T Parks Association and frequently gave popular lectures on mushrooms and toadstools to interested clubs and associations; he was a keen photographer and held a term as Vice-Commodore of the YMCA Yacht Club in Canberra.

Dr C. J. Shepherd regularly lectured to the Botany and Forestry Departments of the Australian National University on microbial ecology, fungal-plant relationships and the taxonomy of fungi. After retirement he published a definitive book Mushrooms and Toadstools of Australia. He died in Foster, New South Wales in 1998.

Source: pers com.: Judith Davis, Department of Human Geography, Macquarie University, June 2006

Collecting localities for 'Shepherd, C.J.' from AVH (2021)

Data from 526 specimens