Charles Duncan Michener
Charles Duncan Michener , called 'Me', (born September 22, 1918 in Pasadena , California , † November 1, 2015 in Lawrence , Kansas ) was an American entomologist . He is considered the most important beekeeper of his time.
Life
Charles Duncan Michener came into contact with natural history through his parents in early childhood. They were avid bird watchers . At the age of 14 he wrote to the important taxonomist Theodore Cockerell and spent a summer with him. Michener made his first publication in 1934 at the age of 16, with the help of Cockerell. In 1939 he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Entomology from the University of California, Berkeley . In 1941 he also received his doctorate from Berkeley. In 1942 he moved to New York City to work at the American Museum of Natural History . Here he devoted himself to the lepidopterological collection. However, his passion was the Hymenoptera , especially bees . In 1944 he published a classification system for bees that was soon used worldwide until he and other colleagues published a new classification in 1993 and 1995. From 1943 to 1946, Michener served as First Lieutenant and later as Captain in the United States Army in the Medical Corps. Here he dealt with diseases that can be transmitted by insects.
In 1948 Michener moved to Kansas, where he worked as an associate professor at the University of Kansas . From 1949 to 1961 and from 1972 to 1975 he was head of the Entomological Institute here. In 1955 he received a Guggenheim scholarship , which allowed him to move to Brazil with his family for a year to do research on the South American bee fauna. In 1957, the Fulbright Research Award allowed him and his family to stay in Australia for a year , teaching and researching the Australian and Polynesian bees. In 1963 Michener was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1965 to the National Academy of Sciences . In 1966 he went on a fourteen-month research trip to Africa, again supported by the Guggenheim Foundation. On this trip he studied bees from South Africa to Uganda. In the 1960s he pioneered the evolution of the social behavior of the Halictidae . This work forms an important basis for the development of sociobiology by Edward O. Wilson in the 1970s.
In addition to his work in teaching and research, he was also an editor for several entomological journals. He retired in 1989, but continued his work as emeritus and published publications until he was the last year of his life. His major late work The Bees of the World came out in 2000.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter M. (PDF; 1.1 MB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved September 26, 2017 (English).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Michener, Charles Duncan |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Michener, Charles D. |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American entomologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 22, 1918 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Pasadena, California |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 1, 2015 |
| Place of death | Lawrence (Kansas) |