Elder son of the artist John Charles Dollman, Guy Dollman was born on 4 September 1886 and attended St Paul's School, winning a scholarship to study at St John's College, Cambridge.
In February 1907, while still a student, he was employed by the Department of Zoology at the British Museum (Natural History),[1] where he spent most of his working life as Assistant Keeper of Mammals.
He was a member of the panel of advisers to the British delegation to the 1933 International Conference for the Preservation of the Flora and Fauna of Africa, said to have been "the high point of institutionalised global nature protection before the Second World War",[4] and, according to his obituary in The Times, Dollman "had a decisive voice on the animal species to be scheduled for total or partial protection".
[5] He travelled and wrote extensively with Walter Rothschild; their publications included New mammals from Dutch New Guinea (1932) and a study of tree kangaroos The Genus Dendrolagus (1936).
He was also an accomplished artist, exhibiting pictures at the Royal Academy, and illustrated many of his own scientific writings.