Arthur Stanley Hirst also known as Stanley Hirst, was an English arachnologist and myriapodologist on the staff of the British Museum, and was an authority on Arachnida, especially AcariMyriapoda. Born in Hackney where his father practiced medicine, he was educated at the Merchant Taylor's School, and studied zoology at the University College London. In October 1905 he was appointed as an assistant at the British Museum where he at first worked on the mammal collection and shortly after was put in charge of the Arachnida and Myriapoda collections, succeeding Reginald Innes Pocock. With the abundant material he had at his disposal, he initially described new spiders, harvestmen, scorpions and millipedes, but soon worked mainly on mites and ticks. He also did some work on the spiders of Australia, the islands of the Indian Ocean, India and Africa. In 1927 ill health forced him to leave the Museum and go to Australia and a drier climate, where he continued his Acari studies at the University of Adelaide. In April 1930, taking advantage of an improvement in his health, he set off to return to England, but died at sea before arriving in Colombo.
Hirst, A. Stanley, 1909b. "Ruwenzori Expedition Reports 6 Arachnida". London, Stanley Gardiner. No. xviii. The Araneae, Opiliones and Pseudoscorpiones. Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Zoology, 19 pt. 1 pp. 57–58.
Hirst, A. Stanley, 1911a. "On a collection of Arachnida and Chilopoda made by Mr. S. A. Neave in Rhodesia, north of the Zambesi". Manchester Mem. Lit. Phil. Soc. 2: 56. 11 pages.
Hirst, A. Stanley, 1911c. "Percy Sladen Trust Expedition to the Indian Ocean in 1905 under the leadership of Mr. J. Stanley Gardiner". No. xviii. The Araneae, Opiliones and Pseudoscorpiones. Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Zoology, series 2, 14: 379–395.
Hirst, Stanley, 1912. "Descriptions of new harvest-men of the family Phalangodidae". The Annals and Magazine of Natural History, including Zoology, Botany, and Geology, London, 8th series, 10: 63–84, plate I.
Hirst, A. Stanley, 1913. "The Percy Sladen Trust Expedition to the Indian Ocean in 1905 under the leadership of Mr. J. Stanley Gardiner". No. II. Second report on the Arachnida – The scorpions, pedipalpi, and supplementary notes on the opiliones and pseudoscorpions. Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Zoology, series 2, 16: 31–37.
