Joseph Cooke Verco in serious return to his love of shells as South Australian Museum curator of molluscs

Sepia braggia (left), a cuttlefish found on Adelaide shores by future Nobel physics prize winner (William) Lawrence Bragg (top right), was named by Joseph Cooke Verco as honorary curator of molluscs at the South Australian Museum, 1914-33. Reg Sprigg (bottom right) winner of the Royal Society of South Australia's Verco medal in 1968 also started his science career collecting shells on Adelaide beaches.

Joseph Cooke Verco, during his eminent career in Adelaide medicine, revived his boyhood interest in conchology from 1887 and became honorary curator of molluscs at the South Australian Museum from 1914 to 1933.

Using his brother William's ketch, Verco earned the techniques of dredging and—often with his nephews—collected shells, corals, crabs, sponges and other marine life. He collaborated with naturalist Charles Hedley and Scottish-Australian zoolologist  professor William Haswell in investigating South Australia’s continent shelf.

Way College headmaster W.G. Torr and Edward Charles Stirling, as museum director, sometimes accompanied Verco whose gifts of shells, specimens, books, apparatus and money to the South Australian Museum eventually helped to form one of the world's outstanding collections.

Verco hired tugs for longer trips along the Great Australian Bight and off the coast of Western Australia. From these journeys, he published papers in the transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia (1895-1918), in the records of the museum (1922-28) and in the proceedings of the Malacological Society of London (1931). Verco kept extensive diaries and was moved to write at least one love poem.

His own fine collection of shells and an excellent and valuable library of literature on the subject were eventually presented to the South Australian Museum, where Verco spent much time after his retirement as honorary conchologist. Verco was mentor to Bernard Cotton who was the museum's curator of molluscs from 1934 to 1962.

The manuscript of Verco’s sea travels was later edited by Bernard Cotton as Combing the Southern Seas (1935). The South Australian Naturalist (August 1933) included a bibliography of Verco's work in malacology. As honorary conchologist at the museum from 1914, Verco methodically and succinctly described 169 new species and subspecies. A fish, a crustacean and molluscs were named after him.

Verco’s work at the museum brought him in contact with young (William) Lawrence Bragg who started collecting 500 specimens of shells during “wonderful holidays” along Adelaide’s Gulf St Vincent. Bragg said Verco was “very kind” to him. When Bragg discovered an unknown cuttlefish, Verco named it sepia gondola – before seeing Bragg’s disappointment and changing it to sepia braggia. (Bragg, who won the Nobel physics prize, with his father William in England in 1915, left his mollusc collection to Manchester Museum.) 

Another ground-breaking Adelaide science figure Reg Sprigg was elected to membership of the Royal Society of South Australia at the age of 17. Sprigg, who received the Royal Society of South Australia's Verco medal in 1968 for his work, had started his interest in science by collecting shells on Adelaide beaches.