Abstract Four years after joining the Natural History Department of the British Museum in 1882, Arthur Smith Woodward published his first taxonomic paper erecting three new species based on sharks’ teeth. He retired from the Natural History Museum in 1924 but continued to publish until his death in 1944 at the age of 80. In total he named 321 new fossil fishes, a remarkable achievement, marking him out as the most influential palaeoichthyologist of his time. For the first time brief details of all his type specimens are brought together, accompanied in many cases by high-quality photographic images, in an online format readily available to anyone with access to the Internet. Supplementary material: Details of all the Smith Woodward type specimens, including images, are available at http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/SUP18874