Playfair, George Israel   (1871 - 1922)

Born in Kent in 1871 and brought up in Wakefield, West Riding, Yorkshire, UK; died in Tauranga, New Zealand on 8 October 1922.

He was the son of a woollen mill manager.

Playfair was educated at nearby Silcoates Hall and travelled to the antipodes in the early 1890s.

George, and his brother Thomas, left England on the SS Oceana on 2 February 1893. His occupation is given as Auctioneer.

According to the curriculum vitae on the fly of one of his notebooks, Playfair landed in NSW on 'Fri March 23rd 1893'.

He arrived with a fascination for microscopy and very likely an inherited microscope.

He worked as a tutor at Winderradeen, near Lake George in 1894, at Moura, via Molong, in 1895, and Everimar, near Orange in 1897. He also taught at Scots College, Bellevue Hill in 1896.

From 1898 to April 1900 Playfair worked as bookkeeper for a guano mining company in the Capricorn and Bunker Group off the Queensland coast, probably living on North West Island.

On his return to Sydney, he looked for work, even though he appears to have had some 'private means'. The colourful Rev. Edward Tremayne Dunstan had him appointed the lay pastor at Auburn Congregational Church in August 1900, and George threw himself into the task with gusto and skill.

He joined with the other non-conformist clergy to set up a Protestant Endeavour Group for the youth. He arranged musical evenings, public prayer meetings, family picnics and much more.

While doing this he started writing papers on freshwater organisms for the Linnaean Society of New South Wales.

In 1907 Joseph Henry Maiden, the Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, had made him 'honorary in charge of freshwater algae' a position he retained until 1912.

He was awarded a Government Science Research Scholarship of the University of Sydney, in Hydrobiology and Plankton in 1913, through the Linnaean Society of NSW .

In August 1912 he moved to the northern rivers. He became a popular organist, marriage celebrant and lay preacher on the Presbyterian circuit around Lismore. He was involved in the tennis club and in fund raising for the war effort.

He was given an extension of the scholarship by the University of Sydney in early 1915 and he was still publishing at that time.

After finishing his research for the University of Sydney, he was appointed an assistant teacher at Murwillumbah Superior Public School in 1918.

He became unwell in 1921 and went to the Bay of Plenty (NZ) to stay with his brother and family to recover. Before he left for New Zealand, Playfair donated his scientific library, 111 items, to Linnean Society of NSW. As the Society no longer has a library, Playfair's books and journals are now scattered between the University of Sydney, the Australian Museum and the library of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney.

He didn't stop collecting as there is a folder of notes and a number of specimen bottles from Tauranga, NZ.

He died in Tauranga, New Zealand on 8 October 1922.

Source: Extracted from:
Stephen Skinner, 'The Parson to the Plankton: George Israel Playfair (1871-1922)',
Telopea Journal of Plant Systematics Volume 25: 355-362, (December 2022)
Portrait Photo: none known.