Professor Mike Archer - Former Director of the Australian Museum
The current Director of the Australian Museum is Frank Howarth
Mike was born in Sydney in 1945 and is a dual citizen of Australia and the USA. His career in vertebrate palaeontology began when he was 11 and proceeded with undergraduate training in geology and biology at Princeton University (BA Geol./Biol. 1967), consecutive Fulbright Scholarships for palaeontological research in the Western Australian Museum, Perth (1967-69) and a PhD in Zoology at the University of Western Australia (1976).
From 1972-78, as Curator of Mammals at the Queensland Museum, he spent equal amounts of time on vertebrate palaeontology and modern mammalogy, producing books and many research papers in both areas.
As Riversleigh work escalated from 1976, the need for a much larger 'army' of coresearchers became apparent and resulted in a shift (1978) to the University of New South Wales, where since 1989 he has been Professor of Biological Science.
In 1999 he became the Director of the Australian Museum in Sydney while maintaining a formal appointment as Professor at UNSW. He supervises about 15 postgraduate students at any one time and coordinates the research activities of 70+ coresearchers.
Awards received for his research include:
- Inaugural Eureka Prize for the Promotion of Science 1990
- Clarke Medal of the Royal Society of New South Wales 1984 for Researches in Natural Science
- Inaugural Queensland Museum Medal 1987
- Australian Heritage Award for Nature Conservation 1989
- Inaugural IBM Conservation Award (with S. Hand & H. Godthelp) 1990
- Von Mueller Medal of ANZAAS 1994
- Verco Medal of the Royal Society of South Australia 1996
- Fellowship of the RZSNSW
- 6 Whitley awards for books.
Throughout his career he has encouraged and fostered public education and involvement. Examples include the Riversleigh Society Inc. (since 1986) and its quarterly publications in Australian prehistory, involvement of the public as volunteers on all expeditions to Riversleigh and Murgon, involvement in the development of museums (e.g., the Riversleigh Fossil Centre in Mt Isa), museum displays (a travelling display on Riversleigh being jointly produced by the Riversleigh Society and the Australian Museum), public education programs (e.g., the 'Tales from the Kangaroo's Crypt...' CD-ROM, one of 10 titles in the Commonwealth's 'Australia on CD-ROM Program' distributed to all schools in Australia) and international recognition of the significance of Australian prehistory (e.g., nomination and enscription in 1994 of Riversleigh and Naracoorte on the World Heritage List).