Sydney Josland
New Zealand biologist (1904-1991)
Sydney Walter Josland (30 January 1904 – 28 June 1991) was a New Zealand bacteriologist who specialised in research into Leptospirosis, Salmonella and the control of diseases in animals.
Early life and education
Born in Christchurch in 1904, Josland was the eldest son of Frederick Josland and Mary Amelia Kerr. He attended West Christchurch District High School. An uncle, Robert Kerr, had made a fortune in South Africa after the Boer War and had retired to Geneva in Switzerland where he invested money into Dr Henri Spahlinger's work on a vaccine for Tuberculosis. Kerr had wanted Josland to study law and had offered to finance his studies. The offer never came through, however, as Kerr died of malarial fever in Geneva on 7 April 1923, aged 46. Perhaps influenced by his uncle's early death, Josland commenced studying towards a medical degree at the University of Otago in Dunedin. He did not finish the degree, due to financial constraints, but gained a Certificate of Proficiency in bacteriology and clinical pathology from the university in 1926. Josland married Elsie Naviro Railton at a wedding officiated by the Reverend Alfred Button at St. Peters Church in Dunedin on 20 December 1927 and they had a son.
“Sydney Josland” enters the record as new Zealand biologist (1904-1991). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sydney, Josland and Zealand can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sydney Josland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.