Julian Kenny

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Julian Stanley Kenny, often known as Jake Kenny, was a Trinidadian zoologist, author, and professor who lived from January 27, 1930, to August 9, 2011. He worked as a Professor of Zoology at the St. Augustine Campus of the University of the West Indies and served as an Independent Senator from 1995 to 2001. He is best known for studying freshwater fishes and frogs and for his contributions to conservation in Trinidad and Tobago.

Kenny was born in Woodbrook, Port of Spain. He studied at Belmont Intermediate School and St Mary’s, and finished Grade 13 at Ridley College in St. Catharines, Canada. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto and worked at a fisheries laboratory in Canada before returning to Trinidad to become a scientific officer in what would become the Fisheries Division. After nine years, he earned a PhD from Birkbeck College, University of London, and joined the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine.

After retiring, he served as Chairman of the Trustees of the Guardian Life Wildlife Fund. Kenny wrote several books about Trinidad and Tobago’s ecology, first with Macmillan and later with Prospect Press, and he also penned a column for the Trinidad and Tobago Express newspaper. He died in Port of Spain at the age of 81.