Biographical dictionary
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Name |
Dates | Biography | |
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| PELERIN, W.G. | Published ‘Capture of a species of Omias new to Britain’ (EMM., 5, 1868, p.44) and ‘Capture of Strophosomus hirtus’ (ibid., 7, 1870, 37). His collection amounting to some 2,500 specimens collected by himself and others c.1858-1875, was acquired by Bolton Museum as part of the Mason collection. It includes the type of Elater punctolineatus Pelerin J. Associated with it is a MS catalogue of localities and sources. He is mentioned in the Janson diary at Cambridge, eg. September 1867. (MD 9/04) | ||
| PEMBERTON, C.H. | Smith (1986), p.141, mentions that a collection of insects of all orders made by Pemberton in British Central Africa, was presented to the HDO by C.V.A.Peel in 1900. (MD 9/04) | ||
| PENNEY, Barry Arthur | Coleopterist who specialised in stored product infestations and Cerambycidae. He lived in Birmingham. FRES from 1954. (MD 9/04) | ||
| PENNY, Thomas | c.1532 - 1589 |
Born in Eskrigg, Lancs. son of John Penny and has been called the first significant English entomologist. Studied as a teenager at Queen's College, Cambridge in 1546, moving to Trinity in 1550 where he graduated in 1551, became a Fellow in 1553 and then senior bursar. He was ordained and also acquired medical qualifications although he was barred from practising (see web entry on British History Online). He died in Gressingham, Lancs, where he lived for much of his life. His involvement with Coleoptera specifically is not known although illustrations of beetles appear in Thomas Moffet's Insectorum sive Minimorum Animalium Theatrum, 1634, which includes Penny's name in conjunction with Edward Wooton and Conrad Gesner, the volume for which Penny is known to have provided many of the illustrations included as wood cuts in the final version (Potts, W.T.W and Fear, L., 'Thomas Penny, the first English Entomologist' in Contrebis, Journal of the Lancaster Archaeological and Historical Society, 25, 2000). D.E.Allen, Books and Naturalists, illustrates the titlepage intended by Moffet which includes a wood cut portrait of Penny, and discusses the production of the book noting that as published it was 'a sorry relic of what Penny could have been expected to pass on for the benefit of his successors had his death not intervened'. Several of the descriptions in the book in combination with his wood cuts have enabled almost 20 different UK butterflies to be identified. John Whittaker 'Thomas Penny - a pioneering English entomologist' in Antenna, Bulletin of the Royal Entomological Society, 45, 2021, 21-22, notes that Penny kept some insects in captivity to study life cycles and that he travelled extensively visiting Majorca, Germany, France and Switzerland. It was in the last that he met Conrad Gesner whose collection of insects he studied. The insect section of Gesner's Historiae Animalium (1551-1587) was not published unti 22 years after Gesner's death prompting speculation that Penny may have been involved. Whittaker also notes that Penny was recognised internationally as an authority on insects, and specimens were sent to him from the New World as well as many parts of the Old World. (MD 4/21)
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| PERKINS, John Frederick | 5 January 1910 - 14 May 1983 | Son of Robert Cyril Layton Perkins (see below) and at one time worked in the NHM on Hymenoptera. Mentioned by Gimingham (1955) as a collector of Coleoptera in Hertfordshire. There are specimens bearing this name in the Gimingham collection at N. Herts Museum. (I am grateful to Trevor James for this information) and Pedersen (2002) p.142 lists correspondence with C.J.Wainwright in the RESL. (MD 9/04, 11/09) | |
| PERKINS, Michael G.L. | 1899-1932 |
Adam Parker has provided the following information about Perkins: Coleopterist, primarily working in Cambridgeshire. There are specimens collected by him in the Yorkshire Museum including examples from Wicken Fen. The collection was organised and then donated by Dr Barry Stewart in 1944. Field diaries are also in the museum. There are references in the Annual Report of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society for 1944 (listed in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (biodiversitylibrary.org)). (MD 12/21) |
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| PERKINS, Robert Cyril Layton | 15 November 1866 – 29 September 1955 | Born at Badminton the son of a clergyman schoolmaster. Studied at several schools before winning a Classics scholarship to Jesus College, Oxford. After hearing a lecture by E.B.Poulton he changed courses to study science in which he graduated in 1889. He had collected butterflies as a boy in the Forest of Dean with his father, and later became interested in Aculeate Hymenoptera. It was these groups which always remained the focus of his British interests. In 1891, after spending a year as a private tutor at Dartmouth, he was chosen by the British Association for the Advancement of Science to investigate the land-fauna of the Hawaiian Islands in co-operation with a Committee of the Royal Society, the combined committee being known as the Sandwich Islands Committee. The Secretary throughout the 22 years of its existence was David Sharp, and it was through him that Perkins added Coleoptera to his entomological interests. Whilst working in the Hawaiian Islands Perkins endured considerable hardship, often living in the mountains and forests in a small tent alone. The research there for which he is best known was on the control of the noxious plant Lantana and on the introduction of controls for the Sugar-Cane leaf hopper. As Director of the Division of Entomology he was responsible for employing Frederick Muir (QV) who worked with him on his entomological projects. In 1912 he was forced to retire because of ill health and he went to live in Devonshire, where he continued to work on his collections for twenty years. Perkins had three sons after marrying Lucy Sharrard in Hawaii, one of whom, John Frederick, worked in the NHM (on Hymenoptera). The bibliography of Perkins’ writings published with his obituary (by Hugh Scott) in Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 2, 1956, pp. 215-236, lists 208 titles of which some 20 or so are devoted to Hawaiian beetles, particularly Carabidae, Cerambycidae and Curculionidae. By far his two most important works were the parts of the Fauna Hawaiiensis devoted to Coleoptera: Rhynchophora, Proterhinidae, Heteromera and Cioidae (2, 1900, pp.117-270) and Coleoptera: Anobiidae, Bostrychidae (witrh D.Sharp), supplement to Cerambycidae (with D.Sharp), supplement to Curculionidae and Proterhinidae; Strepsiptera. (3, 1910, pp.581-643 and 645-667). A large collection of letters from 300 correspondents covering the period 1885-1948 is in the NHM together with a collection of notebooks, autobiographical notes, reports, a diary, etc. (Listed in Harvey et al (1996), pp.159-165) and there is correspondence with C.J.Wainwright in the RESL (Pedersen (2002) p.142).FLS (received Gold Medal in 1912). FRES from 1903 (Hon Fellow 1954). FRS 1920. Gilbert (1977) includes a portrait and lists 6 obituaries in addition to that mentioned above. (MD 9/04) | |
| PERKINS, V. R. | 1831-1922) |
The following is taken from Atty (1983), iii-iv: 'An antiquary who lived in Wotton-under-Edge for most of his life and collected local insects of many groups, but after 1875 especially Hymenoptera. He compiled a manuscript list of the Glos. beetles for the Victoria County History, submitted to them in January 1903 but never published. I have a copy of this, made by R.S.George. In Bristol City Museum are some eight preliminary notebooks with beetle records, four of which are apparently a rougher draft of the others: I have copied all these. Perkins lists his main contributors as Messers Hudd, Harding and Bartlett of Clifton; H.S.Charbonnier of Kingsdown; Merrin, Lifton and Rev. G.M.Smith of Gloucester; James Edwards of Colesbourne; Watkins of Painswick; J.C.R.Hutchings of Wotton; and the 'long lists' of the Rev. A.E.C.Hodgson from Coleford and of the late Sir William Guise of Elmore Court... Perkins merely gives the species, the contributor's name and a place without dates, numbers or comments. Sometimes he quotes the address of the contributor not of the beetle - "Colesbourne, Edwards" whereas the species was taken on a visit to Coombe Hill canal. Other records, particularly Harding's for Bristol, are merely repeats of old records in Stephens...' (MD 8/17) |
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| PERKS, F.P. | Published ‘Dytiscus marginalis’ in Sci. Gossip, 26, 1890, p.191. (MD 9/04) | ||
| PERRINS, James Allan Dyson | 1881 – August 1972 | His collection in a 40 drawer cabinet was given to Birmingham Museum on 11 October 1932 (84.32) together with various Coleoptera catalogues, offprints and other material. The catalogues by Sharp and Fowler are marked up with various pencil annotations and include typescripts which refer to Worcestershire and his collecting companions eg. Ashe and Tomlin. A collection of cards devoted to individual species mentions collectors (included his sister Elspeth) and places visited (mostly Worcestershire but also includes Dorset and Glamorgan), and a collection of loose leaf sheets includes similar material eg. ‘Cryptocephalus sexpuntatus. 22/5/21. I took two specimens sitting on young sallows in Bishops Wood, Hartlebury. Ashe, Donisthorpe and Beare who were also there failed to get any more’. He presented the Henry S.Gorham collection to Birmingham Museum at the same time as giving his own. A brief obituary in Proc.RESL., 37, 1972-73, (C), p.56 mentions that he had little time for active entomological work ‘since the early 1930’s’. (MD 9/04) |