Richard James Arthur Berry FRSE FRCSE (1867–1962) was a British-born surgeon, anatomist and eugenicist who was well-known in Australia.
[2] Berry then took up a role of House Surgeon under Thomas Annandale, Regius professor of clinical surgery at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary on Lauriston Place.
The following year Berry was appointed lecturer in anatomy at the School of Medicine of the Royal Colleges of Edinburgh.
[4] In 1923 a new Anatomy Department was opened at Melbourne University, and was nicknamed ‘’Berry’s Folly’’’ on account of what was thought to be its over-size, but this proved to be prudent foresight once class sizes swelled after the Second World War.
However, in 1927 he toured hospitals of North America with Sir Stanley Argyle the Premier of Victoria, and this ultimately led to the plan being adopted.
In 1929 Berry resigned and began his appointment as director of medical services at the Stoke Park Colony, Stapleton in England.
In 1929 Berry unexpectedly resigned and returned to Britain to take up the role as Head of Medical Services at Stoke Park Mental Hospital near Bristol in England.
He conducted craniometric analysis on the skulls of Aboriginal Australians and people with disabilities with a view towards establishing a relationship between cranium size and intelligence.
In 1906 The Bulletin published a letter protesting at any ‘breathing of regret’ that the Aboriginal population was dying out (Cawte 1986, p. 44), the article queried whether it ‘isn’t it a desirable thing that the inferior races should die out … There isn’t so much spare room on this earth for even the best races…’.
In March 2017 a group of staff and students from the University of Melbourne led a successful anti-racism campaign to rename the Richard Berry Building for Mathematics and Statistics.
Following protests centered around Berry's racist and eugenicist views, the name of the building was changed in March 2017 to instead honour recently deceased mathematician Peter Hall.
[6] The Western Australian plant, Grevillea berryana was named in his honour by Alfred James Ewart and Jean White.