Sir Frederick McCoy was an Irish naturalist and palaeontologist. Following a successful career in Ireland and at Cambridge, where he assisted Adam Sedgwick in arranging the university’s fossil collections, in 1854, McCoy was selected to serve as the first professor of natural science at the University of Melbourne.

McCoy travelled to Australia in 1855 to take up his post at the university and quickly earned a reputation among his students for his staid approach to natural history, preferring to study the natural world from the classroom and from prepared specimens than from direct observation.

In the 1850s, McCoy became involved with developing the museum collections at Melbourne. In 1856, he moved the museum away from the centre of the city to a new site nearer the university, commissioning a new building in the style of the Natural History Museum at Oxford and in 1857 became its director. McCoy used his connections to amass a large collection of natural history specimens for the museum and in 1878 began work on two books on the natural history of Victoria. This book, his Podromos of the Zoology of Victoria, was intended to serve as a catalogue of the indigenous fauna of the region.

Despite his research into Australian animals, McCoy was also responsible for the introduction of invasive species, such as European songbirds, that have since damaged the fragile ecosystems found in the country.