Charles Francis Massey Swynnerton CMG (3 December 1877 Lowestoft

Lowestoft

Lowestoft is a town in the English county of Suffolk. The town is on the North Sea coast and is the most easterly point of the United Kingdom. It is north-east of London, north-east of Ipswich and south-east of Norwich...

 Suffolk

Suffolk

Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...

 - 8 June 1938 Mjari, Tanzania

Tanzania

The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...

), was an English-born naturalist noted for his contributions to tsetse fly

Tsetse fly

Tsetse , sometimes spelled tzetze and also known as tik-tik flies, are large biting flies that inhabit much of mid-continental Africa between the Sahara and the Kalahari deserts. They live by feeding on the blood of vertebrate animals and are the primary biological vectors of trypanosomes, which...

 research.

His father was a senior chaplain in the Indian Army

Indian Army

The Indian Army is the land based branch and the largest component of the Indian Armed Forces. With about 1,100,000 soldiers in active service and about 1,150,000 reserve troops, the Indian Army is the world's largest standing volunteer army...

, and his mother the daughter of Major W. H. Massy, of Grantstown Hall, Tipperary

Tipperary

Tipperary is a town and a civil parish in South Tipperary in Ireland. Its population was 4,415 at the 2006 census. It is also an ecclesiastical parish in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cashel and Emly, and is in the historical barony of Clanwilliam....

. Swynnerton spent his early years in India, returning to England to start his schooling at Lancing College

Lancing College

Lancing College is a co-educational English independent school in the British public school tradition, founded in 1848 by Nathaniel Woodard. Woodard's aim was to provide education "based on sound principle and sound knowledge, firmly grounded in the Christian faith." Lancing was the first of a...

 in Sussex

Sussex

Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...

. In 1897 he was accepted at Oxford University, but emigrated to Africa instead.

In Natal

KwaZulu-Natal

KwaZulu-Natal is a province of South Africa. Prior to 1994, the territory now known as KwaZulu-Natal was made up of the province of Natal and the homeland of KwaZulu....

 he met the renowned entomologist and authority on Curculionidae

Curculionidae

Curculionidae is the family of the "true" weevils . It was formerly recognized in 1998 as the largest of any animal family, with over 40,000 species described worldwide at that time...

, Guy Anstruther Knox Marshall

Guy Anstruther Knox Marshall

Sir Guy Anstruther Knox Marshall , was an Indian-born British entomologist and authority on Curculionidae....

 (1871-1959), who owned some farms in Southern Rhodesia

Southern Rhodesia

Southern Rhodesia was the name of the British colony situated north of the Limpopo River and the Union of South Africa. From its independence in 1965 until its extinction in 1980, it was known as Rhodesia...

 and persuaded Swynnerton to manage one of these in the Melsetter district. In 1900 he became manager of Gungunyana Farm close to the Chirinda Forest in the Chipinga District - this farm was also bought by Guy Marshall in 1902. For the following 19 years Swynnerton used the farm as a base and worked on comprehensive collections of plants, birds and insects, the plants being written up later in 1911 in J. Linn. Soc. (Bot.) 40:1-245 as Flora of Gazaland

Gazaland

Gazaland is the historical name for the region in southeast Newcastle, in modern day Mozambique and Zimbabwe, which extends northward from the Komati River at Delagoa Bay in Mozambique's Maputo Province to the Pungwe River in central Mozambique. It was a district of the former Portuguese East...

. The British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

 was a regular recipient of his plant and insect specimens which were lauded for displaying "a precision in localisation and notes on economic uses which made this collection a model one". He was elected a Fellow of the Linnaean Society in 1907. From the farm he made a number of collecting trips to the nearby Chimanimani Mountains. During this period Guy Marshall became chief editor of the Bulletin of Entomological Research and remained a close friend and mentor to Swynnerton.

The Rhodesian government appointed him in 1918 to research the tsetse fly problem, later that year extending his brief to also cover Moçambique. In 1919 he was appointed as the first game warden of Tanganyika

Tanganyika

Tanganyika , later formally the Republic of Tanganyika, was a sovereign state in East Africa from 1961 to 1964. It was situated between the Indian Ocean and the African Great Lakes of Lake Victoria, Lake Malawi and Lake Tanganyika...

, again with a brief to investigate the tsetse situation, and becoming Director of Tsetse Research at Shinyanga

Shinyanga

Shinyanga, also known as Shinyanga mji in the local Swahili language, is a city in northern Tanzania. The city is the location of the regional headquarters of Shinyanga Region as well as the district headquarters of Shinyanga Urban District...

 ten years later.

In 1937 he was awarded the CMG

Order of St Michael and St George

The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George is an order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George, Prince Regent, later George IV of the United Kingdom, while he was acting as Prince Regent for his father, George III....

 and died in a de Havilland Leopard Moth

De Havilland Leopard Moth

-See also:...

 plane crash the following year on his way to receiving the award. His obituary in Nature

Nature (journal)

Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...

was penned by Sir Guy Marshall. Swynnerton is commemorated by the genus Swynnertonia (Swynnerton's Robin) and in some 40 specific plant names, as well as bird and insect names.

Works

• 1911 Flora of Gazaland - Linnaean Society
• 1936 The Tsetse Flies of East Africa - C.F.M. Swynnerton
• Vernacular Names of East African Mammals - edited by C.F.M. Swynnerton, Transactions of the Royal Entomological Society of London, 84, p. 547-552