Figure 1. Microscope slides by Frank L. Burrows, ca, 1950s-1970s. From the author’s collection or adapted for nonprofit, educational purposes from an internet auction site.
Frank Leslie Burrows, 1920 - 1983
by Brian Stevenson
last updated June, 2026
F.L. Burrows lived in Auckland, New Zealand, where he worked as a chemist with a pharmaceutical business. He became a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society in 1951. His well-made slides encompass a wide variety of specimens (Figures 1 and 2).
Figure 1.
Microscope slides by Frank L. Burrows, ca, 1950s-1970s. From the author’s collection or adapted for nonprofit, educational purposes from an internet auction site.
Figure 2.
Detail of a bee’s leg, prepared by F.L. Burrows (Figure 1). Photographed with a C-mounted digital SLR camera, 3.4x objective lens, and crossed polarizing filters on a Leitz Ortholux II microscope.
Frank Leslie Burrows was born on July 31, 1920 in Auckland, son of John Leslie and Jessie Lois Aldridge Burrows. Frank married Joan Angela Van Lume McLeod in the late 1940s. They had five children.
Government records list him as working as a “technician” or “chemist” throughout most of his life. He began his working life with Home Products, which manufactured Kolynos toothpaste and other domestic products. Burrow’s entry in the 1952 RMS list of Fellows gave his contact address as Kolynos (N.Z.); that he could receive personal mail at work implies that Burrows was a senior employee. The business later became Wyeth, and Burrows worked for them on contract as plant manager overseeing the manufacture of pharmaceutical medicines in Lahore, Pakistan, in Sydney, Australia and in Jogjakarta, Indonesia. His daughter, Gail Burrows, reports that Burrows learned to speak and write Urdu in Pakistan, and Bahasa in Indonesia so he could better communicate with his teams there.
He joined the Royal Microscopical Society in 1951 a corresponding Fellow.
Daughter Gail reports that Frank Burrows actively studied molds and fungi, possibly due to interests in contaminants or in search of new antibacterials. He was an avid collector of diatoms, harvesting "samples of diatomaceous soils, beach foam scum, and shoreline sludge on lake edges to search for diatoms everywhere we went on holiday as a family. I learned to scout for what he wanted to find".
Frank Burrows died on November 21, 1983, in Auckland.
Acknowledgement
Many thanks to Gail Burrows, who graciously shared memories of her father.
Resources
Burrows Family Tree (accessed October, 2025) https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/171091690/person/282221775616/facts
Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society (1951) New Fellows, page 393
New Zealand Birth Index (accessed October, 2025) Frank Leslie Burrows, accessed through ancestry.com
New Zealand Electoral Rolls, accessed through ancestry.com