Wallace, Murray McAdam Hay   (1922 1994)

Born on 24 June 1922 in Melbourne; died on 2 January 1994 in Tomakin, NSW.

Murray Wallace was born in Melbourne, the third son of Sir Robert and Lady Wallace. He graduated from the Department of Zoology of the University of Sydney in 1944, with first class honours in entomology, on the basis of a thesis on mosquitoes.

Immediately after graduation he joined the Royal Australian Air Force as a Flying Officer, and served with a malaria control unit in Papua New Guinea.

In April 1946 Murray was appointed to the CSIR Division of Economic Entomology as an Assistant Research Officer, with a salary of £450 per annum. He was posted to Katanning, WA, with the task of testing the effectiveness of the new insecticides DDT and BHC in controlling the redlegged earth mite Halotydeus destructor. His work led to the widespread adoption of these chemicals by graziers, but Murray did not advocate their indiscriminate use. Instead he set out to determine whether their use was economically worthwhile, and developed a strategy for planning pesticide applications on the basis of market forces. He showed that under some circumstances graziers would be better off spending their money on fertiliser rather than pesticides. This example is typical of Murray's lifelong determination to ensure that the results of scientific research were used to the benefit of the growers and taxpayers who support it.

In later life he continued to work on new industrial insecticides, but also on biological control methods by the introduction of predator species.

In 1983 he was awarded a DSc by the University of Sydney based on a thesis titled: 'The Ecology and Control of some Insects and Mites Associated with Pastures and Forests'.

In retirement Murray and his wife June moved to the South Coast of NSW and became involved with the development of the Eurobodalla Native Botanic Gardens, where they established a herbarium for the native plants of the south coast. In 1992 Murray attended an international conference on botanic gardens in Rio de Janeiro.

He died from a malignant lymphoma at his South Coast home on 2 January 1994.

Sources:
Virtual War Memorial Australia, https://vwma.org.au/explore/people/1087193
The Ryerson Index to death notices and obituaries in Australian newspapers online database, https://ryersonindex.org/search.php
R.B. Halliday (May 1994), OBITUARY: Murray McAdam Hay Wallace 1922 - 1994, Myrmecia: News Bulletin of the Australian Entomological Society Inc. 30(2): 6–12
R. B. Halliday (2001), '250 YEARS OF AUSTRALIAN ACAROLOGY' in Acarology: Proceedings of the 10th International Congress, CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne
Portrait Photo: John Green, CSIRO [extracted from Halliday (1994) obituary cited above]

Collecting localities for 'Wallace, M.M.H.' from AVH (2024)

Data from 471 specimens