Fr David Strong SJ, The Australian dictionary of Jesuit biography 1848-2015, Second Edition, 2017:
Lowery, Bede

Teacher, scientist, pastor; born Tuggeranong, ACT, 6 April 1924; died Sydney, 29 November 1996, aged 72.

One of Bede Lowery's great achievements in life was as an entomologist. He owed his early interest in natural history to his father, George, who was secretary to Dr CEW Bean during the compilation of his history of Australian involvement in the First World War. George had been brought up in the whipstick mallee and the Bendigo goldfields. He was a keen naturalist and he passed his interest on to his five sons. Lowery's early ramblings in Sydney's north shore and the friendship of the Rev Herman Rupp and Alick Dockrill led him towards botany and ornithology.

The Marist Brothers at Mosman groomed him for a scholarship to St Ignatius' College, Riverview, where he was one of the first 15 day boys, and this brought him under the influence of the physics teacher, Father Noel Burke-Gaffney, who introduced him to the mysteries of the microcosm. Eventually close friends such as Fathers John McAreavey, Ossie Summerton and Cornelius Mercovich, New Zealander Bob Taylor and John Freeland, helped Lowery to focus on the hymenoptera and even this specialisation in time was whittled down to the formicidae, the ants.

Lowery entered the Society of Jesus, 2 February 1942, and after his Jesuit training in Australia and ordination, 4 January 1956, spent his first 22 years of priestly life working in schools. He had a great love of cricket, and was a much-respected coach as both a technician and tactician. He was a division prefect and taught religion and Latin at St Ignatius' College, Riverview, during which time he worked hard to integrate the small number of day boys into a strongly boarding orientated school environment.

He was headmaster at the Junior School, St Ignatius' College, Norwood, and headmaster at Xavier College, Burke Hall for a term. He was a conscientious teacher and meticulous administrator.

However, eighteen years of pastoral work followed his teaching years, with appointments that included Murwillumbah, NSW; St George and Giru, Queensland; Clare, South Australia; and Canberra. These became important centres for his far-flung ant collecting activities. He also made the most of overseas visits.

He followed up his passion for myrmecology during terms of sabbatical leave, which enabled him to make several visits to Papua New Guinea and Borneo, and to Malaysia and the Philippines. This was to the ultimate advantage of myrmecology and the Australian National Insect Collection, CSIRO Division of Entomology, which profited from his donations, as they had earlier from the collections of Father John McAreavey and Father Cornelius Mercovich. He discovered a new dolichoderine genus, and it was later named Loweriella. Lowery also discovered two new species of orectognathus, which he named O hystrix and O echinus (from the Greek for porcupine and hedgehog!)

Within Australia, Lowery made contributions to taxonomy and to faunal surveys of regions as disparate as the Warrumbungles, Mt Warning and Tweed River Valley; Kakadu and Rum Jungle; St George across to Cunnamulla in south central Queensland; Eungella, Mt Elliott and Mt Spec national parks; Normanton to Karumba on the Gulf; Daintree, Cape Tribulation and Cooktown rainforests; Porongorups and Mt Ragged; Poochera in the South Australian mallee belt, site of the 'dinosaur' ant, nothomyrmecia macrops; Mt Woodroffe in the Musgrave Ranges and Yudnamuttana in the NE Flinders.

A favourite area of his research was the bulldog and jumper ants, endemic to Australia, found on other continents as fossils; and like much of Australia's fauna, primitive. He found the single genus myrmecia, containing about 125 species. He and Cornelius Mercovich were the first to record two very rare parasitic species from NSW - M hirsuta and M inquilina.

Lowery spent the later years of his life in Tasmania working in such parishes as Devonport and La Trobe. This time gave him opportunities to visit Flinders Island and King Island in Bass Strait, and to accumulate very significant collections of ants from these little-known localities. Lowery collaborated with Bob Taylor to produce a monograph of ants of Tasmania, which recognised about 125 species in 43 genera, and contributed significantly to Tasmanian entomology and biogeography.

While entomology was an important part of Lowery's life, he gave himself foremostly to his priestly ministries. The scriptures, the Vatican II concept of Church and parish-based spirituality groups always remained the priorities of his studies and work.

In the last few months of his life he retired to the Jesuit infirmary at Riverview. He was a most welcome member of the community and apart from the edification he gave during his sickness, he was most generous sharing his spirituality and vision of the Church, encouraging all to be faithful to the spirit of the Second Vatican Council.

(Reproduced by permission of Fr David Strong SJ.)