Biographical dictionary
The Biographical Dictionary of British Coleopterists is compiled and maintained by Michael Darby. The Dictionary can be accessed below, and see also the additional information provide by Michael:
Michael would be pleased to hear from anyone wishing to make corrections or alterations to the Dictionary, which will be fully acknowledged. Email Michael Darby or write to Michael at 33 Bedwin Street, SALISBURY, Wiltshire, SP1 3UT.
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Name |
Dates | Biography | |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAUNT, John William | 2 June 1881 – 11 July 1958 | Primarily known for his work on sawflies but his obituary in EMM., 95, 1959, p.72 mentions that he collected beetles imported in the wood he used as a car body builder at Coventry, and he also contributed a number of notes to the EMM. After his retirement from work, he moved to Cowes on the Isle of Wight. His insect collections were presented to the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry. There are specimens dated 1947 from the Isle of Wight bearing this name in the general collection at Doncaster, acquired as part of the Gilmour collection.Pedersen (2002) pp. 131,132, records that there is correspondence with C.J.Wainwright in the RESL and cites a further letter from Dr A.H.Newton of the Coventry Natural History Society to Wainwright, 17 February 1924, ‘...We have about 4 professional men who attend – Saunt & 2 others of us (very far behind him) are specially interested in Diptera...’ (p.141). Gilbert (1977) refers to an obituary in Proc. Coventry Distr. Nat. scient. Soc., 3, 1959, pp.57-58. (MD 11/04) | |
| SAVAGE, T.S. | There are insects, and letters to Hope 1840-48 and to Westwood 1844-48 containing ‘much information’ concerning them, in the HDO (Smith (1986) pp.87, 148). (MD 11/04) | ||
| SCOTT, C.E. | Andy Salisbury tells me that there are 10 specimens of Carabidae, mostly with unreadable data, bearing this name or the initials CES in the collection of the RHS. (MD 1/07) | ||
| SCOTT, Hugh | 16 September 1885 – 1 November 1960 | Educated at Cambridge where he studied Classics in which he obtained a first in 1906. His obituaries mention that he came under the influence of David Sharp at this time and he was certainly sufficiently interested in entomology to become a member of the Percy Sladen Trust expedition which investigated the terrestrial fauna of the Seychelles in 1908. On his return he succeeded Sharp as Curator of the Cambridge Insect collections a post which he held until 1928 when he left Cambridge to take up the position of entomologist to the Department of Agriculture, Baghdad. Whilst in the Near East he made a trip to Kurdistan but became ill and had to return to England. Upon recovery in 1930 he joined the staff of the NHM where he remained as Assistant Keeper of the Entomology Department until his retirement in 1948. Whilst at the NHM he made further expeditions to Ethiopia (1926-27, 1948-49, 1952-53) and to Aden and the Yemen (1937-38). Scott’s principal taxonomic interests were in the Coleoptera and the Nycteribiidae (Diptera), and as an ecologist his principal works were on the giant lobelias and tree Senecios of East African mountains, and on the fauna of the leaf axils of Bromeliaceae. Scott published various notes on the British entomological fauna in EMM from 1907 but with few exceptions (eg. ‘Hoplia philanthus near Cambridge and Homaloplia ruricola in Oxfordshire’, 50, 1914, pp.221-22) most were not concerned with Coleoptera. His major taxonomic writings were those concerned with the findings of his foreign trips and in particular the Seychelles reports of which he edited all 83 parts. His other publications included a book on his Southern Arabian expedition, In the High Yemen (1942, 1947), and Official Handbooks for Western Arabia and the Red Sea for Naval Intelligence (1942-46). He was on the editorial board of the EMM from 1923. Presumably this is the Scott whose specimens in the Mason Collection at Bolton are marked with the numbers 900, 901, 903 and 904 (but see John Scott below). There are also Scott specimens in the general collection at Cambridge. The types of his foreign collections went to the NHM except a first selection of the Pselaphidae from the Seychelles which went through Achille Rafray’s collection to the Paris Museum. Letters to Scott from Oliver Janson dated 1917 are amongst the Crotch material at Cambridge, and a ms notebook listing localities of insects found in the Seychelles between July 1908 and March 1909 by himself, and in Aldabra, Assumption and Cosmoledo Islands between August 1908 and February 1909 by J.C.F Fryer, is in the NHM (Harvey et. al.(1996) pp.187-88). Pedersen (2002) records that there is correspondence and other material including a collection of letters and postcards dated 1914-1937 in the RESL. The library also has David Sharp’s scrapbook which was presented by Scott. FRESL (Council, Vice-President 1926, Hon Fellow from 1954), FLS (Council), FRGS (Council), FRS (1941). Gilbert (1977) p.345 lists 6 obituaries including EMM., 96, 1960, p.105 with a portrait. (MD 11/04) | |
| SCOTT, John | 21 September 1823 – 30 August 1888 | Well known for his work on Hemiptera but also took an interest in Lepidoptera and Coleoptera of which he formed a good collection. Born in Morpeth. Few details of his early life appear to be known but his obituaries indicate that he was early forced to fend for himself and that by 1849 he was employed as a civil engineer in Glasgow. Shortly after he moved to Stockton-on-Tees, and by 1859 to London where he worked for a firm of metal brokers. After the outbreak of the American Civil War he became Secretary to a Marine Insurance Society. When that Company was taken over, he resigned and took on various jobs including working as a railway surveyor in Spain, and as an engineer in Plymouth and then at Lee-on-Solent. At this last he had several severe epileptic fits which left him partially paralysed. He was declared mentally unsound and placed in an asylum where he died. Scott is recorded to have been a good musician with a wide knowledge of English literature, but he had a violent temper and an acerbic sense of humour which made him no friends. Mentioned in the Gorham diary at Birmingham and in Oliver Janson’s diary at Cambridge (eg. Feb. 1871). The Janson entry for 17 February 1876 states that his father had purchased Scott’s collection, but it is not known to whom it was subsequently sold. Some specimens collected by him are in the Mason Collection at Bolton (marked with the number 911). Gilbert (1977) lists 6 obituaries. (MD 11/04) | |
| SCULTHORPE, A.H. |
Published Bembidion quadripustulatum Serv. and Risophilus (Demetrias) imperialis Germ.in Essex, EMM, 88, 1952, 230, and a note in Annual Exhibition report Proc SLENHS, 43, 1951, 230. Information from Andrew Duff who also records that Leslie Frewin received a specimen of Euophryum confine, taken by him at Upshire, North Essex, in March 1954. (MD 1/22) |
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| SELOUS, Cuthbert Fennessy | d.1946 | Medical Doctor. Published ‘Notes on some Coleoptera found at Barton-on-Sea, Hampshire’ in EMM., 46, 1910, pp.6-8 and ‘A note on the distribution of Bembidium saxatile var. vectensis’, ibid., p.214. He was helped in his determinations by E.A.Newbury. Insects collected by him in Matabeleland in 1906 are in the HDO (Smith (1986) p.149). There is an obituary in Proc.,RESL., 24(C), 1959-60, p.54. (MD 11/04) | |
| SHARMAN |
Simms (1968) records material collected by Sharman in the W.C.Hey collection at York. (MD 12/21) |
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| SHARP, David | 15 August 1840 – 27 August 1922 | Born at Towcester, the son of a leather merchant, but spent his early years at Stoney Stratford in Buckinghamshire. Moved at the age of eleven to London where he joined St John’s Foundation School, Kilburn. After leaving school he had a brief flirtation with the business world before entering St Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1862. He remained there until 1864 when he transferred to Edinburgh taking his degree in 1866. After qualifying, he moved back to London for a short period before returning in 1867 to join the Crichton Institution at Dumfries. From there he moved to take charge of a wealthy patient with whom he remained until that person died in 1883. Sharp then retired from further medical practice and moved firstly to Shirley Warren, Southampton, then Wilmington, near Dartford in Kent, and, in 1890, to Cambridge where he took up the position of Curator of Insects in the University Museum of Zoology. In 1909 he retired from this position and moved to Brockenhurst in the New Forest He had seven children of which one, Anne, an accomplished illustrator, also became an entomologist and married Frederick Muir. Sharp’s interest in beetles was acquired when he was a boy and developed out of an admiration for the aesthetic merits of butterflies and moths. It must also have been stimulated by the fact that Herbert Spencer lived for a time in his father’s house at St. John’s Wood in London and is known to have been an influence on him. By the time he entered Barts he is recorded to have formed a considerable collection. His friend and son-in-law Frederick Muir, in his obituary in ERJV, refers to an old note book kept by Sharp which recorded that in 1862 he possessed 662 named species and that by 1865 this had increased to 1,984. What is more, it is also clear that he was travelling extensively from London in pursuit of his hobby visiting Rannoch with his friend Bishop, the Fens in Norfolk with Brewer, and Deal on the East Coast. In 1869, whilst at the Crichton Institution he published a ‘Revision of the British species of Homalota’ (Trans.ESL, 1869) which Rye remarked was ‘a very difficult work... for which he has burdened himself with the difficulties, or with the complete collections of a very great number of British and Continental entomologists.’ After moving to Thornhill, where he had more time, Sharp took up the study of foreign beetles which led to many publications of which the Staphylinidae of Japan (1874) and of the Amazon Valley (1876), and his Monograph On Aquatic Carnivorous Coleoptera or Dytiscidae (Sc.Trans R.Dublin Soc.1880-82) are, perhaps, the most important. After securing the appointment of his friend Blackburn to an entomological post in Honolulu he received a large number of beetles from the Hawaiian Islands which formed the subject of a series of articles and their joint Memoirs of the Coleoptera of the Hawaiian Islands. It was this work which led directly to his being appointed to the Secreretaryship of the Hawaian Sugar Planters Association in which post he was not only actively involved in further research into the entomology of the Islands but in which he also acted as Editor of the Fauna Hawaiiensis. After moving to Cambridge Sharp not only continued to pursue these works but also undertook several large families for the Biologia Centrali-Americana including the water-beetles, Staphylinidae, Brenthidae, Bruchidae, a large part of the Clavicornia and some of the Curculionidae. He also wrote two volumes on insects in the Cambridge Natural History series which were widely regarded as his magnum opus. As if that were not enough he also acted for 37 years as editor of the Zoological Record, taking on the Insecta from 1885, and the whole publication from 1891, a task which he found very arduous referring to it as his ‘Treadmill’ and as ‘Damoclean’. His efforts to pursuade the ESL to continue Hagen (1862) and a Catalogue of British Insects, both failed. The ms he prepared of the catalogue was withdrawn owing to the failure to agree the nomenclature to be used. An important work published after his retirement was On the Comparative Anatomy of the male genital tube in Coleoptera (1912) which he compiled with Muir. In regard to the British fauna Sharp added many species to our list and published two Catalogues of British Coleoptera (the first Janson, 1871, and the second, with W.W.Fowler, Lovell Reeve, 1893). The total number of his publications even before 1900 amounted to 296 the first of which ‘Occurrence of Stenolophus brunnipes in Britain’ appeared in EMM., 1, 1864, p.48. Sharp is mentioned in the Gorham diary at Birmingham and in the Janson diary at Cambridge (eg May 1867). His collection was donated to the NHM some years before his death. (Harvey et. al. (1996) pp. 189-190) list a ms notebook titled Dr David Sharp Collection of British Coleoptera Catalogue of localities, 1861-1871 which includes some explanatory notes by High Scott (1922), and a typescript Index to the collection. It was apparently this collection which was at one time on loan to Cambridge and is referred to in the Insect Department Register, 8 December 1922, as being in 2 cabinets and 55 store boxes ‘the second cabinet’ and the boxes were mostly unarranged. The ‘first tall cabinet which originally contained the whole British collection’ at that time only contained Cicindelidae to Staphylinidae ‘as rearranged by Dr Sharp in the latter years of his life’. The loan also included his book of localities, described as covering the dates 1861-1875. ‘A blue line at the base of the cards indicating Scottish specimens and a red, English. After 1875 these lines and the list were discontinued and full data was attached to the specimens’. A note in the Crotch volume of Lists, etc. at Cambridge mentions that Sharp and Crotch had special pins made for themselves which were gilt and headless. There are also Sharp specimens in the Mason Collection at Bolton (marked with small blue squares); in the Ellis foreign beetle collection at Liverpool, and in Doncaster Museum. He gave his library to the Cawthorn Institution, Nelson, New Zealand because he thought it would be of more use there than in this country. Sharp letters are included in both volumes of the W.E.Sharp correspondence at Liverpool and there is a detailed MS Part of a Catalogue of Coleoptera at Cambridge which includes bibliographic references to various beetles from Harpalus to Hydaticus. The RESL has a scrapbook and autograph album presented by H. Scott which covers the period 1871-1915 and includes photograph, various papers and letters from F.Walker, G.C.Champion, J.H.Keys, C.O.Waterhouse, A.D.Imms, J.Hamilton and others. It also has correspondence with Herbert Druce (1891, 1893); general correspondence including a request to borrow Sharp’s collection of portraits of entomologists for copying), 1918-1925 and correspondence with C.J.Wainwright (Pedersen (2002)). FESL from 1862 (Secretary 1867, President 1887-88, Vice President 1889, 1891-92, 1896, 1902-03; Council 1893-95, 1902-04, Special Life Fellow 1921). FZS, FLS, FRS 1890, and Honorary member of many foreign societies. Gilbert (1977) lists 16 obituary and other notices. (MD 11/04) | |
| SHARP, W | Lived in Surrey and gave a collection of beetles to Aberdeen University in 1910-1911. The University also has some of his ms notes. (MD 11/04) |