German-born British zoologist, ichthyologist, and herpetologist, ranked the second-most productive reptile taxonomist (after George Albert Boulenger) with more than 340 reptile species described.
He graduated in medicine with an M.D. from Tübingen in 1858, the same year in which he published a handbook of zoology for students of medicine. His mother moved to England, and when he visited the country in 1855, he met John Edward Gray and Professor Richard Owen at the British Museum. This led to an offer to work at the British Museum in 1857, where his first task was to classify 2000 snake specimens. After the death of Gray in 1875, Günther was appointed Keeper of Zoology at the Natural History Museum, a position he held until 1895.
The major work of his life was the eight-volume Catalogue of Fishes (1859–1870, Ray Society). He also worked on the reptiles and amphibians in the museum collection.
In 1864, he founded the Record of Zoological Literature and served as editor for six years. He was one of the editors for the Annals and Magazine of Natural History for more than thirty years. His landmark paper on tuatara anatomy was the first to establish that the tuatara reptile was not a lizard, but in fact the only living member of an entirely new group of reptiles, which he named Rhynchocephalia.
Günther married twice and had three children, including the historian Robert William Theodore Günther (1869–1940). He died at Kew Gardens, London on 1 February 1914 at age 83.
Link to Wikipedia biography