science

Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin

Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin 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 Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin rather than just read about it. In short: Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin (1925 – 13 September 2017) was a British-Rhodesian ornithologist. Biography Irwin was born in Northern Ireland and moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1949 where he met Reay Smithers, then director of the National Museum of Southern Rhodesia in Bulawayo, and soon became collector with the museum.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin (1925 – 13 September 2017) was a British-Rhodesian ornithologist.

Biography Irwin was born in Northern Ireland and moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1949 where he met Reay Smithers, then director of the National Museum of Southern Rhodesia in Bulawayo, and soon became collector with the museum. In 1959 he was assistant curator of vertebrates, subsequently curator of ornithology, in 1975 regional director in Bulawayo, and finally associate ornithologist, and as of 2012 a natural history librarian in Norfolk. Irwin worked closely with Constantine Walter Benson, an authority on central African birds. Together, they expanded the bird collection of the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe until it became the largest both in Africa and in the southern hemisphere. It currently houses over 90,000 specimens from Zimbabwe and neighbouring countries and is one of the museum's greatest resources. In 1981, Irwin published his best known work The Birds of Zimbabwe, but he had previously published the Bibliography of the Birds of Rhodesia in 1978, and co-authored A Checklist of Birds of Southern Rhodesia (with Reay Smithers) in 1957 and The Birds of Zambia (with Constantine Walter Benson) in 1971. He contributed also to The Birds of Africa series (with Emil K. Urban, Stuart Keith and C. Hilary Fry) and has published more than 300 scientific papers, many of them in the museum's journal Arnoldia. Irwin described the subspecies Spizocorys conirostris crypta of the pink-billed lark in 1957, the subspecies Eremopterix verticalis khama of the grey-backed sparrow-lark in 1957, the subspecies Calamonastes stierlingi pinto of the Stierling's wren-warbler in 1960, and together with Benson the subspecies Eremopterix verticalis harti in 1965 and the subspecies Mirafra fasciolata reynoldsi of the eastern clapper lark in 1965. In collaboration with Phillip Clancey he described the monotypic genus Arcanator for the dapple-throat in 1986. Irwin was editor of Honeyguide, an ornithological journal of Bird Life Zimbabwe, for 24 years. In May 2017, he had a severe fall and in September 2017 he died from the consequences of a hip fracture.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin 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 Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin 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 Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin 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 Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin

In research: Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin 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 Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin 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: Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1925 births, 2017 deaths, British emigrants to Southern Rhodesia, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin 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 Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin 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 Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin in simple terms?

Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin (1925 – 13 September 2017) was a British-Rhodesian ornithologist. Biography Irwin was born in Northern Ireland and moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1949 where he met Reay Smithers, then director of the National Museum of Southern Rhodesia in Bulawayo, and so…

Why does Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin 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 Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin?

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 Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin.