science

John Hyacinth Power

John Hyacinth Power is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand John Hyacinth Power rather than just read about it. In short: John Hyacinth Power was the second Director of the McGregor Museum in Kimberley, South Africa. Born in Waterford, Ireland on 2 November 1884, Power emigrated to South Africa in 1904 to take up a post as school master at Kimberley's Christian Brothers' College (now known as St Patrick's College).

Key takeaways

John Hyacinth Power belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect John Hyacinth Power to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of John Hyacinth Power from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

John Hyacinth Power was the second Director of the McGregor Museum in Kimberley, South Africa. Born in Waterford, Ireland on 2 November 1884, Power emigrated to South Africa in 1904 to take up a post as school master at Kimberley's Christian Brothers' College (now known as St Patrick's College). From 1920 he headed the South African School of Mines (later the Northern Cape Technical College).

Early association with the McGregor Museum Although Power would succeed Maria Wilman as museum director only in 1947, his close association with the museum began at the time of its inception in 1907. From 1917, moreover, he became the museum's honorary curator of reptiles and amphibians, herpetology being the field in which he achieved wide renown as a regional specialist. He had been encouraged in this direction by Dr Louis Péringuey, Director of the South African Museum in Cape Town. The first of some forty publications he wrote in various fields appeared in the Annals of the South African Museum in 1913. Amongst the specimens he collected are type specimens that are housed at the McGregor Museum, including Bufo poweri which was named in his honour. Two other amphibians are named for him, Hyperolius poweri and Breviceps poweri. He also collected enthusiastically in other fields of museum science, notably archaeology, being one of the most prolific donors in this field over many decades. A major Acheulean site on the farm of Pniel on the Vaal River near Kimberley is known as “Power’s Site”.

Director of the McGregor Museum in Kimberley Power succeeded Wilman as Director of the McGregor Museum in 1947 and oversaw major expansion and changes in the administration of the institution during the decade that he was at the helm. These included the erection of a new building across the road from the original McGregor Museum, made possible by a generous donation by the daughter of Alexander and Margaret McGregor, Helen Jessie Crawford. De Beers lent its support as well. Here Power was responsible for a set of state-of-the-art natural history dioramas, constructed with the help of artist Nellie Steenkamp. Just months before his retirement in 1958 the Cape Provincial Administration took on the McGregor Museum as a Province-Aided institution, providing an annual grant for the running of the museum, and paying the salaries of its still small staff at public service levels. The Board of Trustees continued to run the museum as it had from the start, but was now able to look to the appointment of extra professional staff. For instance, Dr Gerhard Jurgen Fock was appointed at the McGregor Museum in 1958 as South Africa's first professional full-time museum archaeologist.

Fellowships Power was recognized for his contributions to science by being made a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa, in 1931. In the same year he was elected a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London. He was also a Fellow of the Linnaean Society. Power was President of Section F of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science in 1929 and of Section E in 1949; a founder member of the South African Archaeological Society in 1945; and a founder of the Wildlife Protection Society.

Retirement In retirement, Power lived for a time in Northern Rhodesia before settling in Pietermaritzburg. He died suddenly at his son's home in Johannesburg on 21 December 1964.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with John Hyacinth Power

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what John Hyacinth Power claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to John Hyacinth Power before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about John Hyacinth Power ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of John Hyacinth Power

In research: John Hyacinth Power appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses John Hyacinth Power in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: John Hyacinth Power is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1884 births, 1964 deaths, 20th-century South African zoologists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for John Hyacinth Power outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study John Hyacinth Power in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what John Hyacinth Power means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain John Hyacinth Power out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is John Hyacinth Power in simple terms?

Why does John Hyacinth Power matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study John Hyacinth Power?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on John Hyacinth Power.