Robert Raven

Robert John Raven is an Australian arachnologist. Dr Raven is the Head of Terrestrial Biodiversity and the Senior Curator (Arachnida) at the Queensland Museum. Dr Raven has described over 450 new spider species from Australia and elsewhere. He is also a spider bite consultant to the Royal Brisbane Hospital.

Robert first studied spiders to manage his fear of them. Soon after that, when he tried to study the behavior and ecology of spiders around Brisbane, he discovered that very little was known about their names. Some were new species so he started working on their taxonomy, naming them.