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William Frank Harding Ansell (1923–1996), here photographed at Chilanga, Zambia, in 1971, contributed enormously to scientific knowledge of African mammals. Among his many publications, one can single out his faunal syntheses of the mammals of West Africa, Malawi and Zambia, the exhaustive taxonomy of African mammals (Ansell 1989) and his classification of the Artiodactyla. Each publication attests to the meticulous attention paid to the most arcane detail, expunging any mystery that had attached to a specimen. Franks' boundless energy culminated in an encyclopaedic knowledge of African mammals. His devoted work in the Game Department of Northern Rhodesia (later Zambia) from 1947 to 1974 created a significant legacy for conservation as well (Dowsett 1997). Thanks to his thorough collections and lasting publications, our knowledge of the Zambian bat fauna ranks among the best known on the African continent – a monument to Franks' boundless enthusiasm and commitment to conservation and mammalogy.

Wim Bergmans (b. 1940) is the worlds' leading expert on the diversity of the Pteropodidae. Over the past three decades, his exhaustive studies of all available museum material culminated in a series of detailed publications, revising the taxonomy and biogeography of Afrotropical fruit bats. These brought welcome order to considerable chaos, and immeasurably eased the challenges of writing all the species treatments of fruit bats in this book.

Judith Eger (b. 1946) was Senior Curator of Mammals at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), where she worked from 1968 to 2012; she has been Curator Emeritus since her retirement. Her research has been instrumental in expanding the vast collection of the ROM, including significant additions from Asia. Her notable contributions to knowledge of Afrotropical bats have concentrated on relationships between the Malagasy and African bat faunas; valuable publications include descriptions of new species, among important papers on molossids and butterfly bats, Glauconycteris.

M. Brock Fenton (b. 1943) is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Biology, University of Western Ontario, Canada. He has studied bats since the mid-1960s and has published several books and hundreds of papers on the biology and conservation of bats from nearly all continents. He pioneered studies of the behaviour and ecology of African bats in South Africa and Zimbabwe, and notably the bat faunas of Pafuri, Kruger National Park, and the Sengwa Wildlife Research Area, Chirisa, Zimbabwe. These included the first recordings of sonar calls (Fenton 1975, 1985). With several colleagues, he has made important contributions to our knowledge, including the first studies of bat sonar and the carnivory of Nycteris grandis (Fenton et al. 1993). Brock has encouraged and mentored several generations of active bat biologists.

David L. Harrison (1926–2015) was an explorer, Arabist, medical doctor and zoologist. His studies of bats began early, under the auspices of the family museum in Sevenoaks, England. His collaborations with Phillip Clancey and Reay Smithers, among several expert naturalists across Africa, resulted in a series of important papers on African bats, alongside the creation of one of the worlds' significant scientific collections of small mammals. Among his publications on the mammals, ­including the Chiroptera of the Middle East and India, he held a profound knowledge of Old World bats, notably of the Vespertilionidae and Molossidae (Anonymous 2015, Cotterill 2015).

Robert William Hayman (1905–1985) was a scientific officer in the Mammal Section of the British Museum (Natural History) from 1921 to 1968. He published benchmark papers on African bats. His two major contributions remain Hayman et al. (1966) and Hayman and Hill (1971). These resolved many taxonomic problems and remain invaluable syntheses of knowledge for ongoing research (Hill 1985).

John Edwards Hill (1928–1997) researched mammals in the British Museum as a Scientific Officer from 1948 until 1997, continuing after his official retirement in 1988. A research focus on bats cultivated his encyclopaedic knowledge of the diversity of the worlds' Chiroptera, reflected in the legacy of his numerous publications. These included descriptions of 55 new mammalian taxa, which include 37 new species and subspecies of Chiroptera, alongside describing the hitherto unknown Asian family Craseonycteridae, which is represented by a monotypic species, the minute Craseonycteris thonglongyai (Figure 1).

Karl L. Koopman (1920–1997) was a mammalogist in the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), New York, where he worked studiously until the weekend of his death. His career began in 1948, developing into a focus on taxonomy and biogeography, especially bats. He joined the AMNH in 1961. His encyclopaedic knowledge of the diversity of the worlds' Chiroptera rivalled that of John Edwards Hill. Karls' contributions to knowledge of African Chiroptera include revisions of the taxonomy of the bats of Sudan (1975), Liberia and West Africa; these exemplify both a meticulous attention to the details, and a sweeping geographical perspective. A skilled debater on the subjects he held dear, Karl remains fondly acknowledged as the mentor of an impressive alumni of postgraduate students (Griffiths 1998).

J. A. J. ‘Waldo’ Meester (1931–1994) devoted his life to the study of African small mammals, specialising in the taxonomy of shrews and golden moles. He is best known for his two definitive works: The Mammals of Africa: An Identification Manual (Meester and Setzer 1971) and Classification of Southern African Mammals (Meester et al. 1986). He served as Curator of Mammals at the Transvaal Museum (1952–1963), Director of the Kaffrarian (Amathole) Museum in King Williams' Town (1964) and Founder and Director of the Mammal Research Institute at the University of Pretoria (1966–1971). As Board Member of the Durban Natural Science Museum, he campaigned for the creation of a Mammalogy position there and donated his entire library to the museum.

Randolph L. Peterson (1920–1998) curated the Mammal Section at the ROM from 1946 until retirement in 1985, continuing his research until his death; he assembled one of the worlds' significant collections of African bats. His work on bats was the joy of his professional life, and under his curation the collection of bats at the ROM grew into one of the worlds' finest, both in size (over 35,000 specimens) and global representation (Eger and Mitchell 1990). His thorough studies of African free-tailed bats deserve to be singled out in providing an invaluable contribution to our knowledge of this poorly known group.

Austin Roberts (1883–1948) worked at the Transvaal Museum, Pretoria, from 1910 to 1946. He was a superb field naturalist and perceptive vertebrate taxonomist. Alongside his well-known pioneering research on the southern African ­avifauna, Roberts described a total of 406 taxa of mammals as new to science; these included 15 subspecies and eight species amongst a total of 29 Chiropteran taxa (Brain 1998).

Donovan Reginald Rosevear (1900–1986) pioneered the development of the forestry industry in Nigeria from 1924 to 1954. His enthusiastic studies of the West African fauna included significant collections of mammals. After his formal retirement, he completed three monographs on West African mammals over the subsequent 20 years in research at the British Museum (Keay 1986). These included a significant, lasting contribution in The Bats of West Africa (Rosevear 1965).

Reay Henry Noble Smithers (1907–1987), naturalist, falconer, editor, conservationist and mammalogist (among many professions), began his career as a chemist until joining the South African Museum in 1933; he transferred to the fledgling organisation of the then Museums of Southern Rhodesia in 1947. Besides his founding of four major museums in Zimbabwe, Reay both undertook and facilitated comprehensive natural history surveys across south-central Africa, notably of the mammals of Botswana (Smithers 1971). Among many selfless contributions were lasting inputs into conservation, notably to pioneering legislation of the National Parks and Wildlife Act of Zimbabwe. Perhaps the greatest monument to his legendary excellence in museology and commitment to science resides in the largest collection of mammals in the southern hemisphere at Bulawayos' Natural History Museum. His magnum opus, the Mammals of the Southern African Subregion (Smithers 1983), collated a wealth of his original data on the regions' mammal fauna, including bats (Raath 1988).

Michael Rogers Oldfield Thomas (1858–1929) devoted virtually all his lifes' attentions to the mammal collection at the British Museum (Natural History) – from 1878 until after his official retirement in 1924. In this period the collection grew exponentially through at least 1 million specimen accessions. His lifes' total of 1,090 scientific publications included the scientific descriptions of some 2,090 new taxa of mammals from across the world; Thomas named many Afrotropical bats (Hill 1990). This immense taxonomic legacy endures, alongside the mammal collection in the British Museum, as a significant foundation of scientific knowledge in the twenty-first century. This portrait (circa 1914) was painted by John Ernest Breun.