Oscar Werner Tiegs FRS FAA (12 March 1897 – 5 November 1956) was an Australian zoologist whose career spanned the first half of the 20th century.

He was acknowledged as having a remarkable ability for apt and beautiful drawings, and as being an excellent microscopist, as having a great capacity for meticulous accuracy, persistent work, and shrewd elicitation of relationships from massive detail.

He described himself as a timid but industrious boy with an absorbing interest in insects, and acknowledged the support of the Queensland Government entomologist, Henry Tyson.

[2] Commencing in March 1916[7] at the University of Queensland he studied science, specialising in biology under Thomas Harvey Johnston, where he received training in animal morphology.

He worked with scientists researching the control of the blowfly and prickly pear in Queensland, and was involved in the campaign to eradicate hookworm.

[7] On 14 August 1926, Oscar Tiegs married Ethel Mary Hamilton, a telephonist, at the Presbyterian Church in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn.

[1][2] He lectured without notes, mainly to first year students, to whom he gave a solid background in elementary zoology and comparative morphology, in a manner which was considered a model of presentation and clarity.

[16] He, Sydney Sunderland, and Thomas MacFarland Cherry, two other petitioners and foundation members[16] were responsible for drafting the by-laws of the newly formed Academy.

He spent time and care improving and extending its holdings, based on his belief in the traditional morphological approach to zoology.

[2] Oscar Tiegs' scientific interests and contributions ranged from the physiological analysis of nervous and muscular action to invertebrate embryology,[2][3] his studies being comparable to the very best work the last century.

[4] Typically, even his first research paper, was to describe something unusually interesting, namely that the male of the echiuroid worm exhibits a greater degree of degeneration than other species, the tissues fusing with those of its female partner and the host.

He briefly made some helminthological investigations,[2] for example with hookworm,[1][3] and monogeneans[18] before moving to the newly created Department of Zoology at the University of Adelaide[2] in 1922.

[2] During 1925 Oscar Tiegs moved to Melbourne University's department of Zoology as a senior lecturer, then headed by Professor Wilfred Eade Agar.

[3][4][10] As a histologist Oscar Tiegs developed an interest in Boecke's suggestion of a double innervation of vertebrate skeletal muscle.

He showed contrary to expectation that the progoneate genital ducts did not arise as is usual from coelomoducts in the embryo, but secondarily as epidermal ingrowths late in larval life, the progoneate form was merely a secondary adaptation to the anamorphic mode of growth of some myriapods by which new segments become added to the posterior end of the growing larva.

[2] He proposed a new classification scheme based on head structure, this being supported by later work by others regarding antennal muscles, and locomotive behaviour and machinery in the relevant animals.

[4] The Royal Society elected Oscar Tiegs as a fellow in 1944[l][39][1][3][4][10][15] for:[40] He was appointed to a Chair of Zoology at the University of Melbourne in 1948[m][41][1] which he held until his death, and became a full Professor in 1948.

[10][43] This second trip provided Oscar Tiegs with the opportunity to be formally admitted to the Royal Society,[44] after being elected as a Fellow 10 years earlier.

[49] Tiegs Place, a street in the suburb of Florey in Canberra, is named after Oscar Tiegs, notably for:[50]Biologist; Walter and Eliza Hall Fellow in Economic Biology, 1920; on staff, Zoology Department, Queensland University; Lecturer, Melbourne University, 1925; David Syme Research Prize and Rockefeller Travelling Fellow, 1948; Fellow, Academy of Science; President, Section D meeting, ANZAAS, 1949; Dean of Faculty of Science, 1950–52; important research on insect metamorphosis; published numerous papers and articles.Included along a heritage trail through the CT White and James Warner parks at Kangaroo Point, Brisbane, Queensland, are interpretive signs which commemorate the life and work of Oscar Tiegs as one of the pioneering scientists from the area.