Gerald Malcolm Durrell (7 January 1925 – 30 January 1995) was a British naturalist, writer, zookeeper, conservationist, and television presenter. Born in Jamshedpur, British India, he moved to England when his father passed away in 1928. In 1935, the family relocated to Corfu, staying there for four years until the outbreak of World War II forced them back to the UK.

In 1946, Durrell used an inheritance to fund animal-collecting trips to British Cameroons and British Guiana. He married Jacquie Rasen in 1951, who encouraged him to write about his first trip to the Cameroons, resulting in The Overloaded Ark. His book sold well, initiating a series of accounts of his adventures. In 1956, he published the bestseller My Family and Other Animals.

In the late 1950s, Durrell founded the Jersey Zoo as an institution for animal study and captive breeding. Control was transferred to the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust in 1963. Although the zoo faced financial challenges, Durrell's writings and fundraising efforts secured its future.

Durrell remarried Lee McGeorge in 1979, making several successful documentaries and co-authoring The Amateur Naturalist, which sold over a million copies and led to a television series.

He was honored with an OBE in 1982, and in 1984 he founded the Durrell Conservation Academy. Despite battling liver cancer and cirrhosis in 1994, he passed away in January 1995. His ashes were interred at Jersey Zoo.