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Tim Halliday

college teacher, herpetologist, author

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 17, 2025
Entity authorityQ64551669
Source-derived summary

Professor Timothy Richard Halliday was a British herpetologist and artist.

He was born on 11 September 1945 in Marlborough, Wiltshire, to Edna (née Barlow) who was a housemistress at Marlborough College, her husband, Jack Halliday was a biology teacher there.

He was educated at Marlborough College, then studied zoology at Oxford University, where his doctoral thesis was on the sexual behaviour of newts.

He joined the Open University in 1977, as a lecturer in biology, and by his retirement in 2009 was a professor of biology.

He played a key role in organising the 1989 'First World Congress of Herpetology' at the University of Kent, and was instrumental in the creation of the Declining Amphibian Populations Task Force, and served as its international director from 1994 to 2006. He also helped to establish the TRITURUS network of newt researchers.

Between 1990 and 1998 he seat on the council of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), as well as chairing its conservation committee. He was also an advisor for David Attenborough's programmes Life on Earth and Life in Cold Blood.

As an artist, Halliday specialised in painting birds, frogs and toads.

He married Carolyn Wheeler (who had been the first female pupil at Marlborough College) in 1970.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Tim Halliday” is college teacher, herpetologist, author. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Halliday, college and teacher, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1945, 1977, 2009, 1989—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1945-09-11. For this dossier, Halliday, college and teacher is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “college teacher, herpetologist, author” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q64551669. VIAF identifies the subject as 14842879. The Library of Congress control number is n77017497. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1945, 1977, 2009 and 1989.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Tim Halliday”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Tim Halliday primary sources, Tim Halliday archive and Halliday research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Tim Halliday”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Tim Halliday” 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.