Biographical dictionary
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Name |
Dates | Biography | |
|---|---|---|---|
| RATCLIFFE, Brett C. | 18 March 1946 – Present | Born in Bedford to an English mother and American father. Lived in Tokyo, Japan as a teen-ager, where he first began collecting insects, before moving to the USA. Dr. Ratcliffe is Curator of the Division of Entomology and Professor at the University of Nebraska State Museum in Lincoln Nebraska, USA. Where he specialises in the taxonomy, biology, ecology, phylogeny, and biogeography of scarab beetles, especially those of the Neotropics. His research interests centre on dynastine scarab beetles of the world and the New World gymnetines (Cetoniinae). He has conducted research and collected annually in Central and South America from 1974 to the present (2006), and lived in Amazonian Brazil working for the National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA) from 1976-1978. He has published over 110 peer reviewed scientific papers and 5 books on scarab beetles. His lab, known as “Team Scarab”, is internationally known for its scarab research and student training. In view of this, the U.S. National Collection of Scarab Beetles was transferred to his lab from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. in 1999 for an extensive period of off-site enhancement. He interacts regularly with the staff and collections at the Natural History Museum in London in pursuit of his research. (Information from BCR) (MD 12/06) | |
| RAW, Frank | 1919- October 1967 | First Professor of Entomology at the University of Queensland, Australia, who was born in England and after War work on wireworms became an advisory entomologist first at Long Ashton and then in the National Agricultural Advisory Service at Bristol working on the Cockchafer. He then spent 19 years at Rothamstead including a two year secondment to Ghana working mainly on soil insects, on the control and ecology of pests and on earthworms. He was the author of Life in the Soil and joint editor of Soil Ecology. He took up his post at Queensland six months before his death. There are obituaries in Nature, 217, 1968, p.691 and Proc.RESL, 32, (1967-68) (C), pp.59-60. FRES 1948-1967. (MD 11/04) | |
| RAWLINS, R. | Stephens (1828) p.62 refers to captures by the late R.Rawlins in 1810. (MD 11/04) | ||
| RAY, John | 29 November 1628 – 7 January 1704 | Well-known early naturalist who was primarily a botanist and who worked with Francis Willughby on Lepidoptera. His ‘Extract of a letter concerning spontaneous creation’ (Philos. Trans. 6(74), 1671, pp.2219-20) includes notes on some insects smelling of musk including Aromia moschata . (MD 11/04) | |
| READING, J.J. |
Lepidopterist who lived in Plymouth and published a catalogue of the Lepidoptera of Devon and Cornwall. Also interested himself in beetles about which he wrote ‘Notes concerning the capture of several Coleoptera’ in Zool., 16, 1858, pp.5927-28, and ‘Myrmecophilus Coleoptera in the neighbourhood of Plymouth’, ibid., 5929-30. He is mentioned by Frederick Smith as taking Dinarda dentata in nests of the ant F. fusca in Entomologists Weekly Intelligencer, 1860-61, 10 (MD 1/04, 10/21) |
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| REDMAN, E. | There are specimens bearing this name in Ellis’s foreign beetle collection in Liverpool Museum. (MD 11/04) | ||
| RENDALL, Robert | 24 January 1898 – 8 June 1967 | Mainly a conchologist who lived in Orkney and worked for a firm of drapers in Kirkwall all his life. His obituary in Journal of Conchology, 26, 1968, pp.273-74 mentions that he made a collection of beetles as a boy. (Information from Geoff Hancock). (MD 11/04) | |
| RENDELL | Rendell Collection 43/1928 appears on specimens in the general collection at Exeter Museum. (MD 11/04) | ||
| RESTON, Arthur | b.1844 | Mentioned by Sharp (1908) p.13 as one of the ‘Other students and collectors of the Coleoptera, belonging perhaps to a somewhat different social order [ie. not ‘working men’]’. He lived at Stretford and was still alive in 1907. Sharp states that his collection was ‘almost complete’ and ‘has been lately purchased by the Owens College Museum.’ Johnson (2004) records specimens in the general collection at Manchester dating 1886-1904 and notes that the majority of Reston’s collection was made up of T.Morley’s specimens. There are also Reston specimens in the Blatch collection there and the Museum also houses notebooks and catalogues. Hancock and Pettit (1981) note that ‘it is extremely difficult to relate data in catalogues to specimens’. Johnson (2009) records that he lived at Park House, Stretford, Manchester, in 1901-04 (MD 11/04, 11/09) | |
| REYNOLDS, Edgar Marston | 1906 - c.1980 | Born in Birmingham and educated at Keble College, Oxford before becoming a priest. Jonathan Cooter tells me that ‘he was primarily a Lepidopterist, but built up representative collections of larger Coleoptera and Diptera, including longish series of several uncommon species. Also a good botanist, his herbarium being donated to Birmingham University (or Museum). His insect collection was purchased by Hereford City Museum in 1988 his daughter retaining a selection of the Lepidoptera, and his widow giving me permission to retain a selection of the insects for my own use. Although not primarily a Coleopterist, he was well known to contemporary specialists – for example he and his wife stayed at Granish with Harwood on occasions. (MD 11/04) |