Alfred William Alcock CIE FRS (23 June 1859 in Bombay – 24 March 1933 in Belvedere, Kent) was a British physician, naturalist, and carcinologist.

This office closed soon, and he worked from 1878 to 1880 in Purulia as an agent recruiting unskilled labourers for the Assam tea gardens.

He studied bones using Holden's Osteology – "Thence I crept on by means of a Nicholson's ' Manual of Zoology ' to the Descent of Man and the ' Origin of Species.'

In 1881 Alcock's elder sister moved to India as her husband was a distinguished officer in the Indian Civil Service.

[1] In 1892 Alcock resigned (having attained the rank of major)[2] and became Deputy Sanitary Commissioner for Eastern Bengal.

At the Indian Museum, Alcock worked on improving the public galleries of Reptiles, Fishes and Invertebrates.

Lord Curzon decided to exhibit the collections of the Indian Museum as a memorial to Queen Victoria in 1903 and Alcock was ordered to "vacate the gallery of Fishes at a moment's notice."

These experiences caused Alcock to quit and he returned home in 1906 writing to the Government "telling him what an impossible post the Superintendentship of the Museum was and begging him to get it improved for the sake of the Science of Zoology and of my successors."

He was made a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) in the 1903 Durbar Honours,[4][5] and received the Barclay Medal from the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1907.

Investigator,' " published in " Scientific Memoirs by Medical Officers of the Army of India," Part XII, Simla, 1901.

Investigator,' ", a series with illustrations by Indian artists (mainly A. C. Chowdhary and S. C. Mondul) has been considered as exceptional in beauty and accuracy.

[1][6] In herpetology, Alcock described five new species of reptiles, some in collaboration with the English ornithologist Frank Finn.