William Sharp Macleay (21 July 1792 – 26 January 1865) was a British civil servant and entomologist.
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Macleay was born in London, eldest son of Alexander Macleay who named him for his then business partner, fellow wine merchant William Sharp. He attended Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge graduating with honours in 1814.[1] He was then appointed attaché to the British embassy at Paris, and secretary to the board for liquidating British claims on the French government, and following his father in taking an interest in natural history became friendly with Georges Cuvier, and other celebrated men of science.
Macleay's principal work was Horae Entomologicae; or, Essays on the Annulose Animals, parts 1-2 (1819–1821). He also published Annulosa Javanica or an Attempt to illustrate the Natural Affinities and Analogies of the Insects collected in Java by T. Horsfield, no. 1 (London, 1925).
Other minor publications on insects including Remarks on the devastation occasioned by Hylobius abietis in fir plantations in the Zoological Journal and several notes in the Transactions of the Entomological Society of London. Macleay sent many insects to Frederick William Hope, now in the Hope Department of Entomology. He was also a correspondent of Charles Darwin, though he disagreed fervently with the latter's theories of evolution.
Macleay was the originator of the short-lived Quinarian system of classification, which is used extensively in his Horae Entomologicae.
In 1825, Macleay was appointed British commissioner of arbitration to the joint British and Spanish Court of Commission in Havana, Cuba, for the abolition of the slave trade; he became commissary judge in 1830, and then was appointed judge to the Mixed Tribunal of Justice in 1833. He retired in 1836 on a pension of £900. Throughout these years he also maintained a correspondence with his sister Frances (Fanny) Leonora Macleay (1793–1836). These letters typically convey a harsh, even severe impression of his character.
Macleay had maintained his scientific work whilst in Havana and was elected to the Linnean Society, of which his father had been Secretary (1798–1825), and the Zoological Society. He was elected president of the natural history section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
Macleay emigrated to Australia in 1839, living briefly at the Colonial Secretary's House in Macquarie Place with his parents before moving in September of that year to the family's still unfinished Elizabeth Bay House. He took possession of the estate in 1845 having taken on his father Alexander's considerable debts and the mortgages on the property (he formally inherited it in 1848). In an attempt to raise funds he also sold furniture he had acquired in London on behalf of his father but for which he had never been reimbursed. He did not however complete the house, and it remained without its planned colonnade. The house became a meeting place for a small circle of intellectuals and naturalists, though Macleay was not known for being actively sociable. Thomas Mitchell Jnr satirised the house and owner: 'Bleak House blears blindly o'er Eliza's Bay, chill as its owner's hospitality' (Carlin, p45). Macleay was interested in the natural history of Australia, the marine fauna around Port Jackson in particular. Later he collected a large number of Australian insects; on his death these were bequeathed to his cousin William John Macleay, whose interest in natural history he encouraged and who in 1888 transferred them to the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney, for which act he was knighted. He also encouraged the scientific interests of his brother George Macleay.
Macleay lived alone at Elizabeth Bay House until his death in 1865.
Additional resources listed by the Australian Dictionary of Biography: