He was born in Geneva. In 1854 he was elected travelling fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, of which he had been an undergraduate, and subsequently visited many parts of the world, including Lapland, Iceland, Spitsbergen, the West Indies and North America. In 1866 he became the first professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at Cambridge, a position which he retained until his death. His services to ornithology and zoogeography were recognized by the Royal Society in 1900, when it awarded him a Royal medal.
He wrote many books, including Zoology of Ancient Europe (1862), Ootheca Wolleyana (begun in 1864), Zoology (1872), and a Dictionary of Birds (1893 - 1896). He contributed many memoirs to scientific societies, and edited The Ibis (1865 - 1870), the Zoological Record (1870 - 1872), and Yarrell's British Birds (1871 - 1882).
Newton spent some time studying the vanishing birds of the Mascarene Islands, from where his brother Sir Edward Newton sent him specimens. These included the Dodo and the Rodrigues Solitaire, both already extinct. In 1872 he was the first person to describe Newton's Parakeet which also lived on the island of Rodrigues. This bird became extinct in 1875.
Reference
Other people called Alfred Newton
For Alfred Newton the SOE field agent, see Alfred Newton (SOE).